Starting Points

Sep 1, 2009

3 Americans Charged With Traveling to Cambodia for Sex With Children - washingtonpost.com

By Ashley Surdin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 1, 2009

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 31 -- Three Americans accused of traveling to Cambodia to have sex with children are expected to be charged in federal court here, officials said Monday, marking the first prosecutions under a new international initiative intended to combat child-sex tourism.

The initiative, Operation Twisted Traveler, targets Americans who exploit children for sex in Cambodia, which experts describe as a top destination for child predators. U.S. and Cambodian authorities, as well as nongovernmental organizations, were involved in the effort.

"This level of cooperation is unprecedented," said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, which coordinated the initiative with the Justice Department.

Before arriving in Los Angeles on Monday, the suspects -- Ronald Boyajian, 49, Erik Peeters, 41, and Jack Sporich, 75 -- were arrested by Cambodian authorities on charges related to child sexual exploitation. They are expected to make their initial appearances in federal court Tuesday afternoon.

The three men are current or former California residents, and all are registered sex offenders, authorities said. An attorney for Boyajian did not respond to a call to comment. The other two men do not yet have attorneys.

Child-sex tourism -- whereby minors are sold for sex through brothels or solicited off the street -- has long been part of the landscape in Cambodia. Like most countries where the crime occurs, such as Thailand and Mexico, Cambodia is a poor nation, with a $600 annual per capita income, according to the World Bank. In desperation to pay for food or health care, some families sell their children to foreign pedophiles or sex houses.

It is difficult to know how pervasive child-sex tourism is in Cambodia, or in any other country, because of the illicit nature of the crime. Undercover investigators, working with human rights activists, continue to find many brothel owners and traffickers selling minors for sex in Cambodia.

There are increasing reports of men traveling there to have sex with underage girls for as much as $4,000, according to the State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report of 2009. The report designated the Southeast Asian country as among those that should receive special scrutiny because it has not made enough progress in eliminating the problem.

Cambodia has made some efforts. Over the past year, after enacting laws with anti-trafficking provisions, the government convicted a dozen offenders and prosecuted nearly 70. U.S. legislation, including the PROTECT Act of 2003, has also targeted trafficking. The legislation bolstered federal laws targeting predatory crimes against children outside the United States by expanding the range of crimes and increasing penalties.

Officials say Twisted Traveler, launched in October, will help enforce existing laws. Under the initiative, the FBI and ICE trained the Cambodian National Police and local police in Phnom Penh, the nation's capital.

"Some part of what we're trying to do here is change attitudes and change acceptance of child-sex tourism as something that's always been around or can't be changed," Carol A. Rodley, the U.S. ambassador to Cambodia, said in a telephone interview. "And I think that's very much true of the Cambodian police -- that their attitudes about the issue have changed in part because of the collaboration."

Authorities in both countries relied on information provided by Action Pour Les Enfants, a nonprofit group, and the International Justice Mission, a human rights agency. Their involvement, Rodley said, marked a breakthrough for Cambodia, which historically has had an uneasy relationship with such organizations because of their criticism of the government.

In a statement announcing the latest allegations, officials said Boyajian, of Menlo Park, Calif., is accused of having sex with a 10-year-old Vietnamese girl. Peeters, of Norwalk, Calif., is accused of engaging in sexual activity with at least three underage Cambodian boys, paying them $5 to $10. Sporich, of Sedona, Ariz., is accused of sexually abusing at least one Cambodian boy, and of driving through city streets on his motorbike, dropping money as a way to attract children.

If convicted, the men face sentences of up to 30 years for each victim.

Officials said they hope the arrests will deter would-be sex tourists. Over the past six years, ICE has arrested more than 70 suspects nationwide on charges of child-sex tourism.

"The appeal of a place like this is that it's very far away, and pedophiles feel like they can come here and be anonymous and be outside the reach of U.S. law enforcement," Rodley said. "I hope the message that it sends is one of deterrence."

U.N. Chief's 'Quiet' Outreach To Autocrats Causing Discord - washingtonpost.com

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 1, 2009

UNITED NATIONS -- U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has a message for despots and dictators: We can talk.

The world's top diplomat has had more face time with autocratic leaders than any of his recent predecessors, jetting off for tete-a-tetes with Burma's senior general, Than Shwe, and pulling aside Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir at summits for discreet chats.

Ban has said he is confident that his trademark "quiet diplomacy" can help nudge the most recalcitrant leaders to mend their ways. He says he has pried open the door for aid workers in cyclone-ravaged Burma, gotten thousands of international peacekeepers into Darfur and helped raise the international profile of climate change.

"It is human relationships which can make a difference," Ban said in a recent interview, adding that he doesn't find it productive to scold foreign leaders in public but won't shrink from delivering tough messages in private. "Some might think I have been quite soft, but I have been quite straight, very strong in a sense."

The approach, however, has recently exposed the U.N. chief to criticism that he too often remains silent in the face of atrocities by the very leaders he seeks to cultivate, and that he has exaggerated his accomplishments. His frequent contacts with unsavory leaders have contributed to the United Nations' reputation as a forum for grubby compromises, detractors say.

"The main image people have of him is sitting down with the bad guys and getting nothing," Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said of Ban.

As the Obama administration explores the merits of engagement with its adversaries, including Iran, North Korea and Syria, Ban's diplomatic strategy offers insights into some of the political risks of haggling with the world's most difficult political leaders. Halfway through his first term, Ban is facing a leadership crisis as U.N. civil servants and diplomats here increasingly portray him as an ineffective administrator whose reluctance to hold outlaw leaders to account for bad behavior has undercut the United Nations' moral authority.

For Ban, perhaps the greatest test of engagement as a policy came earlier this year.

In Sri Lanka, where the government was pushing to crush the ruthless Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the secretary general reached out to President Mahinda Rajapaksa to persuade him to show restraint to protect the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians forced to serve as the Tigers' human shields.

In an effort to maintain a cordial working relationship with Rajapaksa, Ban and his top advisers withheld criticism of the government, advising U.N. human rights officials not to publish U.N. estimates of the civilian death toll in the conflict, arguing that they were not convinced of their credibility, according to officials familiar with the discussions. In the end, Ban's diplomatic intervention achieved a brief weekend pause in the fighting but did little to stem to slaughter, which cost the lives of 7,800 to 20,000 civilians.

Ban says he won commitments from Sri Lankan leaders to improve conditions for displaced people and to pursue reconciliation, but his handling of such crises has raised questions among some U.N. diplomats about his viability for a second term.

Norway's U.N. ambassador, Mona Juul, wrote that Ban is a "spineless and charmless" leader who has failed to convey the U.N.'s "moral voice and authority," according to a confidential memo to Norway's foreign minister. Juul, whose husband, Terje Roed-Larsen, serves as one of Ban's Middle East envoys, sharply criticized Ban's handling of the crises in Sri Lanka and Burma in the memo, which was first published in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten.

"The Secretary-General was a powerless observer to thousands of civilians losing their lives and becoming displaced from their homes," Juul wrote of Ban's role in Sri Lanka. "The moral voice and authority of the Secretary-General has been missing."

Ban has been stung by the criticism and said he is striving to improve his performance. But he suggested that the criticism stemmed from a misunderstanding in the West of his Asian diplomatic approach. "We need to be able to respect the culture, tradition and leadership style of each and every leader," Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, told reporters in a visit to Oslo on Monday. "I have my own charisma, I have my own leadership style."

Mission to Burma

Despite the criticism, Ban still enjoys the support of the United Nations' most powerful countries, including the United States, China and Britain, and of the U.S. Congress, which has recently voted to pay off American debt to the United Nations.

Ban's advisers say the criticism is patently unfair and does not take into account his willingness to speak out against abuses. Ban infuriated China by criticizing its treatment of ethnic Uighurs in western China, he has spoken out against Iranian President Mamhoud Ahmedinijad's nuclear ambitions and his frequent anti-Israeli remarks, and he has publicly scolded the powerful Group of Eight industrial powers for not committing to steeper emissions cuts.

Still, U.N. officials and diplomats are concerned that the criticism of Ban's political mediation is overshadowing what they believe is his most important accomplishment: rallying international support for a treaty that would reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

The Obama administration has publicly praised Ban's performance. But before joining the administration, Samantha Power, the White House's top U.N. specialist, was a sharp critic of Ban's diplomatic style, characterizing his handling of the Darfur crisis as "extremely disappointing."

"Can we afford to do without a global figure, a global leader?" she told the New Statesman, a British magazine, last year.

U.S. officials say that Power's comments do not reflect the views of the administration and that they were made before she had an opportunity to work closely with Ban.

"Secretary General Ban has one of the most difficult jobs in the world," Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in a statement. "I believe he is principled, hard-working, cares deeply and is willing to take risks to carry out his mission." Rice also credited Ban with increasing the number of women in senior posts and "bringing countries together to tackle challenges such as climate change and global health."

But Rice has differed with Ban over his engagement strategy, and she cautioned him against traveling to Burma in July. Rice argued that a high-profile meeting with the Burmese military ruler would make him look weak unless he extracted a clear commitment to democratic reform, according to U.N. officials.

During his visit, Than Shwe bluntly rejected Ban's appeal to release opposition leader Aung San Su Kyi; Ban's request to meet with her also was denied. Five weeks later, a Burmese court sentenced Suu Kyi to 18 additional months under house arrest, ensuring that she will not participate in the country's national elections next year.

But Burma's ruler subsequently allowed another visitor, Sen. James Webb (D-Va.), to meet with Suu Kyi and to take home a U.S. citizen, John Yettaw, who had been sentenced to seven years in prison for paying an unauthorized visit to her villa.

Ban bridles at the suggestion that his trip was a failure, saying he has established a vital personal channel to the Burmese leader. Ban said he also prevailed upon Than Shwe to allow him to address a gathering of Burmese officials, academics and relief groups, where he sharply criticized Burma's human rights record and publicly chided Than Shwe for rebuffing his request to see Suu Kyi. "That was unprecedented," Ban said.

Burmese opposition leaders say that while they appreciate Ban's efforts, they do not think he has moved the country toward democracy. "I don't want to say it was totally nothing," Burma's exiled prime minister, Sein Win, said during a recent visit to U.N. headquarters. "When you look at the immediate impact, of course, we could not see anything."

'Spotlight' on Sri Lanka

In Sri Lanka, Ban and his advisers sought to perform a delicate balancing act. They pressed the country's leader in private to halt the shelling of civilian zones, while avoiding an open confrontation with cautiously worded public statements about the violence.

Human rights advocates faulted Ban for not pressing hard enough to hold Sri Lanka accountable for its actions. Days after the war ended, the secretary general signed a joint agreement with Rajapaksa committing Sri Lanka to pursue political reconciliation with ethnic Tamils and to release hundreds of thousands of displaced ethnic Tamils in government-controlled camps.

In exchange, Ban dropped a U.N. push for an independent investigation into war crimes, leaving it to Sri Lanka to determine whether its military was responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians in the final offensive. Two days later, Sri Lankan diplomats, citing the agreement, quashed a proposal by the top U.N. human rights official to create an independent commission of inquiry to probe war crimes in the country.

Some diplomats have defended Ban's handling of the crisis, saying he pushed far more aggressively to protect Sri Lankan civilians than did any government, including the United States, India, China, Russia and key European powers.

"He put a spotlight on what was happening in Sri Lanka," said John Sawers, Britain's U.N. ambassador. "So it's not perfect in Sri Lanka; far too many civilians got killed and there is still an outstanding problem with the civilians in the [Internally Displaced Persons] camps. But I believe Ban's engagement made the situation less bad than it would otherwise have been."

E.Timor releases suspected Indonesian militia - UN - Reuters

Image via Wikipedia

By Sunanda Creagh

DILI (Reuters) - An Indonesian man who was allegedly involved in crimes against humanity in East Timor when the country voted for independence has been released from a Dili prison, a United Nations spokesman said on Monday.

East Timor's government under President Jose Ramos-Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao has attracted strong criticism from rights groups over its policy of pardoning convicted ex-militia and pursuing a conciliatory approach with Indonesia, its sprawling neighbour and former ruler.

Louis Gentile, the East Timor representative of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the release of Martenus Bere, who was wanted for militia attacks on pro-independence civilians, sent the wrong signals.

"His release is contrary to the Security Council resolutions which set up the U.N. mission in Timor Leste (East Timor) and completely undermines the principle of accountability for crimes against humanity globally," Gentile told Reuters.

"This has global significance."

A former Portuguese colony, East Timor was invaded in 1975 by Indonesia. An estimated 180,000 died during the occupation, and the U.N. estimates about 1,000 East Timorese died in the mayhem that surrounded the 1999 vote for independence.

According to a document archived on the website of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Bere was a member of a militia that attacked and killed pro-independence civilians, including priests, in September 1999, in what became known as the Suai massacre.

"He was believed to have been involved in directing the attack. He was not one of the junior ones, so that's why this is so serious," Gentile told Reuters.

CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

Bere was recently arrested near the Indonesian border on an outstanding warrant for crimes against humanity, but was released from Dili's Becora prison on Sunday on instructions from Gusmao, Gentile told Reuters.

A spokesman for the East Timor government was unable to confirm immediately whether Bere had been released.

Indonesian news website Kapanlagi.com quoted West Nusa Tenggara governor Frans Lebu Raya saying that Bere had been released and was currently at the Indonesian embassy in Dili. The Indonesian embassy in Dili did not return calls from Reuters.

Damien Kingsbury, an expert on East Timor and Indonesian politics at Australia's Deakin University, said Indonesia had been pushing for Bere's release.

"This will ease tensions with Indonesia but increase domestic anger over impunity," Kingsbury told Reuters.

East Timor has pursued much closer diplomatic and economic ties with Indonesia, its more prosperous neighbour. "No one denies that warm relations between Indonesia and East Timor is a good thing. But nevertheless, the issue of justice for crimes against humanity needs to be separated from the need for good relations. It is a complete distortion of priorities," said Gentile.

Bere's release coincided with the 10th anniversary celebration of East Timor's vote for independence, as President Ramos-Horta awarded prizes to scores of activists for campaigning against human rights abuses.

On Friday, the president mounted a spirited defence of his decision to oppose a UN Crimes Tribunal in East Timor.

"I know what suffering is," said Ramos-Horta, who lost four siblings in the conflict.

"But I repudiate the notion that we do not care about justice. Indonesian democracy has progressed. Indonesians are the ones who will bring justice to Indonesia, in their own time."

A new political generation rises in East Timor - Reuters

Image via Wikipedia

By Sunanda Creagh

DILI, Aug 30 (Reuters) - As a student activist in Jakarta, Avelino Coelho da Silva sought refuge in the Austrian embassy to avoid capture by Indonesian troops. Now as East Timor's Secretary of State for Energy Policy, he installs solar power in villages.

Coelho, 46, is likely to be among the next generation of leaders in the tiny, oil and gas-rich nation which voted overwhelmingly for independence from Indonesia exactly a decade ago.

Both Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, 63, who was imprisoned by Indonesia, and President Jose Ramos-Horta, 59, who campaigned abroad to keep East Timor's struggle in the public eye, are independence heroes.

But a new generation of political leaders, most of whom were children or students during Indonesia's rule, is getting ready to take over.

A former Portuguese colony, East Timor was invaded in 1975 by Indonesia. An estimated 180,000 died during the occupation, and the U.N. estimates about 1,000 East Timorese died in the mayhem that surrounded the 1999 vote for independence.

Since then, Dili has struggled to tackle security, social and economic woes including high unemployment, splits in the army, and poor infrastructure, healthcare and education.

"If you look at other members of cabinet, I tell you, 80 to 85 percent are new generation. People no more than 35-45 years old, who grew up in the era of occupation. This is the new generation running the country. They are the hope of this country," said Ramos-Horta.

Damien Kingsbury, an East Timor analyst from Australia's Deakin University, said there are already several people in East Timor ready to take over the reins from Gusmao and Ramos-Horta.

"It's essentially the student generation, members of the student resistance organisations and expat Timorese who went back from Australia and Indonesia," Kingsbury said.

The next elections are due in 2012.

The challenges the new leaders face remain daunting. Many roads are just dirt and gravel, making communication with remote villages tough.

Almost 30 percent of the adult population is illiterate: the young men who hang around on Dili street corners are evidence of the 40 percent jobless rate in a country where average household monthly income is just $27. In parts of Dili, roadside stalls sell cast-off clothes to people who can't afford to buy them new.

Coelho's Rural Electrification Master Plan has brought electricity to 17 isolated villages in just over a year by installing solar power systems, funded by the government but owned, installed and maintained by community cooperatives.

"Now they have electricity for five to six hours a day. Before, they spent $US1 a day to buy kerosene but now they can save $US30 a month and use it for other things," he said.

Max Lane, a political analyst who covers Indonesia and East Timor, said the electrification project had helped build Coelho's reputation.

"There will be other candidates around when the big guys leave politics but Coelho will definitely be in the race."

NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK

Ramos-Horta, who survived an assassination attempt in February 2008, said he sees Fernando Lasama de Araujo, the 46-year-old speaker of parliament, as a future leader.

Araujo, who got almost 20 percent of the vote in the 2007 presidential elections, was acting president for several months after Ramos-Horta was shot by disgruntled former soldiers. He was also involved in negotiations with the militants, who eventually laid down their arms.

Araujo, from the Democratic Party, says the government cannot just rely on its $5.1 billion Petroleum Fund, where money from oil and gas deals is collected, to fund development.

"We need to get the money from somewhere to accelerate development. I support foreign loans to achieve this," he said.

"After 10 years of independence, we should have achieved more than we have. Water is a very important one and roads, and schools. Until we build a port we cannot attract investors and tourism."

Finance Minister Emilia Pires, 48, who grew up and studied law in Australia, is another leader carving out a name for herself as she tries to increase spending on education, health and infrastructure. Pires is an independent, like some other cabinet members, and is close to Gusmao.

The economy grew 12.8 percent last year and she expects it to expand 8 percent both this year and next.

(For an interview, click on [ID:nJAK518967] )

Her predecessor, Fernanda Borges, an Australian-educated former credit risk analyst who helped set up the Central Payments Office, the forerunner of the Banking and Payments Authority, or central bank, is also considered a future leader.

Borges, 40, quit as finance minister in 2002 after accusing the government of corruption, and formed her own party, the National Unity Party.

East Timor ranked 145th out of 180 countries in Transparency International's 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index -- on a par with Kazakhstan and below Indonesia.

"I understand my limitations as a member of a small party. I know I don't have the resistance hero image behind me. But with three seats in parliament we can be a voice to say this is wrong and when the government is doing the right thing, we can say this is the right thing too," she told Reuters in an interview.

"We are the new kids on the block but people trust us. (Reporting by Sunanda Creagh in Dili; Editing by Sara Webb and Sanjeev Miglani)

Aug 31, 2009

Link by Link - Wikipedia Looks Hard at Its Culture - NYTimes.com

Image via Wikipedia

By NOAM COHEN

BUENOS AIRES

EUGENE KIM left his conference here on Thursday afternoon to visit the Plaza de Mayo, where the mothers of victims of Argentina’s military dictatorship in the 1970s and ’80s march silently, their hair swept under white scarves.

The weekly marches began in 1977 to remember “the disappeared,” those who were snatched and killed by the dictatorship in an attempt to destroy the political opposition. Today, the mothers represent a movement — they are joined by supporters as they march, and there are key chains and T-shirts for sale. People like Mr. Kim come to take photographs.

“They have been professionalized,” Mr. Kim observed. It’s inevitable, he says. He should know; he is in the professionalization business. Or consulting, as it is also known.

His latest client, as of July, is the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization in San Francisco responsible for Wikipedia projects around the world, which is spending $600,000 to create a five-year strategic plan. And the conference he briefly left was the annual Wikimania gathering, held last week in the General San Martín Cultural Center, just off Corrientes Avenue, one of the main arteries of Buenos Aires, and a short subway ride to the Plaza de Mayo.

He and the other newly hired wiki-consultants tended to stick out. They were a bit older. They were a bit better dressed (O.K., a lot better dressed). They tended to travel in packs of two or three. And they were taking notes. Few had been to this conference before, and they were clearly trying to figure out where to begin in remaking a miraculous project that had become among the top five Web sites in the world, with a total of more than 330 million visitors a month, without the benefit of consultants.

In addition to Mr. Kim, there was Jelly Helm, a former executive creative director at Wieden + Kennedy who worked for clients like Nike before leaving to focus on nonprofit work, and three members of the Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit consulting firm that will help analyze trends within the Wikipedia community.

In a similar role is Matt Halprin, a partner of the Omidyar Network, a “philanthropic investing firm” created by Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, which in August announced a $2 million grant to the foundation over two years. Mr. Halprin, a former vice president at eBay in charge of global trust and security, was just named to the Wikimedia board.

•

The presence of the wiki-consultants was the most tangible sign of soul-searching among Wikipedians, and certainly at the foundation. Wikipedia has never been more influential but this success has come with burdens — errors or vandalism can resonate around the world, while the largest projects, English Wikipedia and German Wikipedia, were losing steam, adding fewer articles and scaring off potential new contributors. And to a certain temperament, great success naturally leads to the question, how long can it last?

“There is a spirit and culture that is starting to shift,” Mr. Kim said of the need for a strategic plan. “That is a necessary thing. But the question is how do you scale without losing sight of your essence.” A student of collaboration, Mr. Kim, whose consulting business is called Blue Oxen Associates, says any plan will have to “do it the wiki-way.”

“We will put those questions up on the wiki and have them go at it for an extended time and hope that we get something,” he said.

He will be soliciting proposals from the community, which will have its own wiki pages, and Wikipedians are being asked to commit 10 hours a week for four months to join task forces divided by issues of concern.

Jimmy Wales, the public face of the project, was unsparing in his criticism in addressing the conference. “We are mostly male computer geeks,” he stated, adding that there might be a measure of diversity, but only in that “we are from different parts of the world.”

As he spoke, a chart showed the self-reported demographics of Wikipedia contributors — more than 80 percent male, more than 65 percent single, more than 85 percent without children, around 70 percent under the age of 30.

Some Wikipedias are dominated by articles about pop culture, Mr. Wales pointed out, especially Japanese Wikipedia; according to one of his slides, barely 20 percent of the articles on Japanese Wikipedia are about anything else.

More profoundly, he said that Wikipedia was losing sight of its commitment to give everyone in the world a free encyclopedia, particularly people in sub-Saharan Africa. “Is it more important to get to 10 million articles in English, or 10,000 in Wolof?” he asked.

In her speech, Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, was effusive in her praise for all that Wikipedians have created, but she too thought there was reason for concern.

“I believe we are pretty suspicious outsiders,” she said, adding that there were good reasons for that. “We are vulnerable to exploitation — people want to monetize the traffic that comes to Wikipedia, or pursue a political agenda.”

“People want to help us,” she said. “We need to open ourselves up to external resources. It is important we open those doors and let those people in.”

•

Walking through Buenos Aires, Mr. Helm said this was unlike any communications assignment he had taken on. “It is an awesome story to tell, but I have no idea what we’ll do in terms of tactics,” he said. “My hope is that no one will be able to say who did they hire to do this work.”

Mr. Kim said one issue Wikipedians would need to examine would be “the introduction of bureaucratization,” as represented by outsiders like himself. “It is important to me that my participation have a beginning and an end,” he said.

Invisible Immigrants, Old and Left With ‘Nobody to Talk To’ - NYTimes.com

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By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN

FREMONT, Calif. — They gather five days a week at a mall called the Hub, sitting on concrete planters and sipping thermoses of chai. These elderly immigrants from India are members of an all-male group called The 100 Years Living Club. They talk about crime in nearby Oakland, the cheapest flights to Delhi and how to deal with recalcitrant daughters-in-law.

Together, they fend off the well of loneliness and isolation that so often accompany the move to this country late in life from distant places, some culturally light years away.

“If I don’t come here, I have sealed lips, nobody to talk to,” said Devendra Singh, a 79-year-old widower. Meeting beside the parking lot, the men were oblivious to their fellow mall rats, backpack-carrying teenagers swigging energy drinks.

In this country of twittering youth, Mr. Singh and his friends form a gathering force: the elderly, who now make up America’s fastest-growing immigrant group. Since 1990, the number of foreign-born people over 65 has grown from 2.7 million to 4.3 million — or about 11 percent of the country’s recently arrived immigrants. Their ranks are expected to swell to 16 million by 2050. In California, one in nearly three seniors is now foreign born, according to a 2007 census survey.

Many are aging parents of naturalized American citizens, reuniting with their families. Yet experts say that America’s ethnic elderly are among the most isolated people in America. Seventy percent of recent older immigrants speak little or no English. Most do not drive. Some studies suggest depression and psychological problems are widespread, the result of language barriers, a lack of social connections and values that sometimes conflict with the dominant American culture, including those of their assimilated children.

The lives of transplanted elders are largely untracked, unknown outside their ethnic or religious communities. “They never win spelling bees,” said Judith Treas, a sociology professor and demographer at the University of California, Irvine. “They do not join criminal gangs. And nobody worries about Americans losing jobs to Korean grandmothers.”

The speed of the demographic transformation is leading many cities to reach out to the growing numbers of elderly parents in their midst. Fremont began a mobile mental health unit for homebound seniors and recruited volunteer “ambassadors” to help older immigrants navigate social service bureaucracies. In Chicago, a network of nonprofit groups has started The Depression Project, a network of community groups helping aging immigrants and others cope.

But their problems can go unnoticed because they often do not seek help. “There is a feeling that problems are very personal, and within the family,” said Gwen Yeo, the co-director of the Geriatric Education Center at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Many who have followed their grown children here have fulfilling lives, but life in this country does not always go according to plan for seniors navigating the new, at times jagged, emotional terrain, which often means living under a child’s roof.

Mr. Singh, the widower, grew up in a boisterous Indian household with 14 family members. In Fremont, he moved in with his son’s family and devoted himself to his grandchildren, picking them up from school and ferrying them to soccer practice. Then his son and daughter-in-law decided “they wanted their privacy,” said Mr. Singh, an undertone of sadness in his voice. He reluctantly concluded he should move out.

So when he leaves the Hub, dead leaves swirling around its fake cobblestones, Mr. Singh drives to the rented room in a house he found on Craigslist. His could be a dorm room, except for the arthritis heat wraps packed neatly in plastic bins.

“In India there is a favorable bias toward the elders,” Mr. Singh said, sitting amid Hindu religious posters and a photograph of his late wife. “Here people think about what is convenient and inconvenient for them.”

Move to the Ethnoburbs

Sociologists call Mr. Singh and his cohort the “.5 generation,” distinct from the “1.5 generation” — younger transplants who became bicultural through school and work. Immigrant elders leave a familiar home, some without electricity or running water, for a multigenerational home in communities like Fremont that demographers call ethnoburbs.

A generation ago, Fremont was 76 percent Caucasian. Today, nearly one-half of its residents are Asian, 14 percent are Latino and it is home to one of the country’s largest groups of Afghan refugees (it was a setting for the best-selling book “The Kite Runner”). Along the way, a former beauty college has become a mosque; a movie house became a Bollywood multiplex; a bank, an Afghan market, and a stucco-lined street renamed Gurdwara, after the Gurdwara Sahib Sikh Temple.

Reliant on their children, late-life immigrants are a vulnerable population. “They come anticipating a great deal of family togetherness,” Professor Treas said. “But American society isn’t organized in a way that responds to their cultural expectations.”

Hardev Singh, 76, and his wife, Pal Keur, 67, part of Fremont’s large Sikh community, live above the office of the Fremont Frontier Motel, its lone nod to a Western motif a dilapidated wagon wheel sign.

They rented the fluorescent-lighted apartment after living for three years with their daughter, Kamaljit Purewal, her husband, his mother and two grandchildren. As the children grew, Mr. Singh and Mrs. Keur were relegated to the garage, transformed into a room. As Mr. Singh said, “in winter it was too much cold.”(Ms. Purewal said that she “tried to give them a better life,” but felt unappreciated because her parents favored her older brother in India. “If you’re a happy family, a small house is a big house,” she said. )

Fraught family dynamics when elderly parents move in with children often leave older members without a voice in decision-making, whether about buying a house or using the shower.

Pravinchandra Patel, the 84-year-old founder of the 100 Years Living Club, intervened when he heard that the son in one family was taking his parents’ monthly Supplemental Security Income check, for $658, then doling out $20 for spending money.

“I ask the son, ‘How much money do you figure you owe your parents for your education?’ ” he said.

Crying, Not Smiling

Once a lush landscape of fruit trees and cauliflower fields, Fremont, 40 miles south of San Francisco, is now the Bay Area’s fourth-largest city, with voters from 152 countries. Physical distances can be compounded by psychic ones: 13 percent of the city’s immigrant seniors live in households isolated by language. Theirs is a late-life journey without a map.

For the men in the 100 Years Living Club, the road leads to the Hub, where they have been meeting for 14 years, since the Target store was a Montgomery Ward. Mr. Patel, who was an herbal doctor in India, started the group after he noticed his friends were in “house prisons,” as he put it, without even the confidence to use a bus. The men keep their spirits alive by sharing homemade chaat snacks. They are the lucky ones.

Two miles away, Zia Mustafa, an Afghan widow, sits at her kitchen table with its plastic tablecloth, looking at a scrapbook with bright color postcards of Turkmen girls in elaborate dress posed against an azure sky.

Mrs. Mustafa arrived here on a desolate emotional road. Her husband and eldest son were killed by a rocket in Kabul; her son Waheed, now 24 and living with her in Fremont, lost his leg in the attack. Other children remain in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“My family is divided in three,” she said through a translator, weeping.

Waheed Mustafa, after surgery in Oakland, leads the life of a young man in his 20s — going to school, working out, talking on his cellphone, hanging out with friends.

Mrs. Mustafa, who was home-schooled in the Koran, spends her days watching television soap operas, attempting to decipher stories through actors’ facial expressions. She sleeps with the lights on, worrying that even within these safe white walls this son, too, will not come back.

“They come from a country where it takes so much to survive, yet they feel they haven’t done enough,” said Dr. Sudha Manjunath, a psychiatrist who consults with the city’s mental health unit. “To tell them now, ‘It’s time to take care of yourself’ — well, they’ve never heard of such things.”

A recent health survey by Dr. Carl Stempel, a sociology professor at California State University, East Bay, found that most Afghan women here suffer from post-traumatic stress.

“I thought they would be so happy in this country — all the houses, the food, the cars,” said Najia Hamid, who founded the Afghan Elderly Association of the Bay Area, an outreach group for widows, with seed money from Fremont. “But I was met with crying.”

Young couples who need to work to support families have imported grandparents in part to baby-sit. There is a misguided assumption that baby-sitting is sustenance enough for the aging, said Moina Shaiq, founder of the Muslim Support Network, which brings seniors together. “We are all social beings. How much can you talk to your grandchildren?” Mrs. Shaiq said.

Small Things Matter

In 1965 changes to immigration policy allowed naturalized citizens to sponsor the immigration of parents without quota restrictions. By 1996, a growing perception that elderly immigrants were “gaming the system” — that their children were pledging to support them and then enrolling their parents in the Supplemental Security Income and food stamp programs — became an impetus for welfare reform. Congress imposed a five-year waiting period for Medicaid and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and restricted S.S.I. and food stamp eligibility for adults.

Some states, including California and New York, have chosen to eliminate the waiting period for Medicaid for lawfully residing immigrants, paying with state money.

Michael Fix, senior vice president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonprofit center in Washington, said that as immigrants form a larger part of the elderly population, “all the issues that bear on health care and social services will increasingly be transformed in part into immigrant issues.”

In 2007, according to census data, about 16 percent of immigrant seniors lived below the poverty line, compared with 12 percent of native-born elderly, said Steven P. Wallace, the associate director of the Center for Health Policy Research at the University of California, Los Angeles. Another 24 percent of immigrant elderly are “the near-poor,” he said, “sitting on the edge of a cliff.”

Kashmir Singh Shahi, 43, a former engineer who was born in India, is a volunteer for the Community Ambassador Program for Seniors, offering people like Hardev Singh an attuned ear.

Mr. Singh, a retired driving instructor for the Indian army, is 76 and determined to work full time. He takes two buses to work the night shift at a gas station an hour away. “I don’t want to become idle in the heart,” he said matter-of-factly.

Mr. Singh had not been to a doctor in years, and Mr. Shahi helped him and his wife apply for Medicare. Mr. Singh is also entitled to Social Security but will not accept the additional assistance.

Mr. Shahi’s experiences with his own parents have illuminated the way for his clients. He came to the Bay Area in 1991 to work at a fiber optics company, and he sponsored his parents six years later.

After his father died, Mr. Shahi changed careers so he could care for his mother, who has suffered from depression.

She shares a room with her 12-year-old grandson, Kirat, improbably surrounded by Iron Man and Incredible Hulk posters. In this affectionate setting, amid decorations for her granddaughter’s Sweet 16 party, the 84-year-old woman sat quietly, blue slippers on her feet, her eyes cast downward at her folded hands.

“In India, she would walk to the grocery store, go next door to have tea, talk about common things like the wheat and the corn,” said Mr. Shahi of the ingrained visiting culture so universally missed by many ethnic elders. “At home anyone can knock on the door anytime, to relieve the pressure. Here nothing is similar.”

So at the end of his day counseling others, Mr. Shahi sits with his mother before she goes to bed. He always asks if she needs any warm milk.

“The small things matter,” he said of his mother and other elders longing for home. “The feeling that they are welcomed.”

Likely Japanese PM Hardly a Natural Politician - washingtonpost.com

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By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 31, 2009 3:51 PM

TOKYO, Aug. 31 -- Stiff, shy and very rich, Yukio Hatoyama cuts a curious figure for an opposition leader whose party laid waste on Sunday to the most formidable political machine in the history of modern Japan.

Hatoyama, 62, who soon will become prime minister, has perhaps the bluest political blood in the land. But he is hardly a natural politician.

He has said that when he was studying for a doctorate in engineering at Stanford, he spent many hours wondering what is was that made him avoid human relationships and turn away from all things political.

When he did enter the family business of politics in the 1980s, a far-away look, an eccentric manner and a wooden style of speaking caused him to be nicknamed the "alien." Part of it was the content of his speeches. He talks about how "politics is love," a formulation not often heard from ambitious Japanese politicians.

That message was honed in this summer's campaign to "putting people's lives first." In a promise that resonated with voters, he said his party would wrench power away from bureaucrats who serve the interests of big business. He said he wanted to create "a horizontal society bound by human ties, not a vertically connected society of vested interests."

In a childhood that echoed the cosseted intellectual ambitions of the New York Roosevelts, including Theodore and Franklin, Hatoyama grew up in a splendid European-style family palace in Tokyo. There he collected insects and stamps with his little brother Kunio. He and his brother, who also grew up to be a politician, are believed to have assets of no less than $100 million.

Their grandfather was a prime minister and a founder of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which had governed Japan as a virtual one-party state for more than half a century -- until Sunday.

That's when Yukio Hatoyama's Democratic Party rolled over the LDP in a historic landslide. For the first time in Japan's postwar history, voters gave an opposition party control of the government.

For Hatoyama, it was a victory that cut three ways against the family grain. For not only was his grandfather an LDP potentate, his father served in an LDP government as foreign minister and his brother had been an LDP minister in the government of Prime Minister Taro Aso, which voters slapped down on Sunday.

The man who routed the party of his forebears came into politics with the help of that party. He became a private secretary to his father in 1983, and three years later, running for his father's seat, was elected to the lower house of parliament.

It is one of the ironies of Japanese-style reform politics that Hatoyama's party, as part of its manifesto, has promised to ban inherited seats.

Hatoyama had had enough of the LDP by the early 1990s. He defected to a small opposition party and was a leader of a fragile eight-party coalition that briefly grabbed control of the lower house -- and tossed the LDP out of power. But the coalition fell apart in less than 11 months and the LDP again took control.

Hatoyama soon co-founded the Democratic Party -- a slightly left-of-center mix of disaffected LDP veterans, trade unionists, former bureaucrats and ex-socialists. The party jelled as a vote-winning force under the leadership of Ichiro Ozawa, a wily political strategist and former LDP power broker, surprising and humiliating the LDP in a 2007 election by winning control of the upper house of parliament. If the party also was able to win control of the lower house, which selects the government, Ozawa would become prime minister.

Then a campaign fundraising scandal forced Ozawa to resign as party leader in May, creating an opening for Hatoyama. After it became clear on Sunday that voters had resoundingly rejected the LDP, Hatoyama thanked Ozawa on national television for engineering their party's victory.

As the long reign of the LDP demonstrates, Japanese voters tend to like continuity in government. It makes them anxious to toss aside the powers that be. For that reason, there are worries here about the new, largely untested leadership.

In polls and interviews, even voters who support the Democratic Party have expressed doubts about the experience and competence of its leaders. Many economic and political analysts say the party does not have a credible economic plan. It is highly doubtful, they say, that new leadership can deliver on promises to put more cash into the hands of consumers.

There are also doubts about Hatoyama's decisiveness and leadership skills. He has never held a major position in government, serving only in 1994 as a deputy cabinet spokesman for a government that soon collapsed.

But on the campaign trail this summer, his speeches have become more engaging and his message more inspiring. He has developed a reputation as a gentle man, one who kneels and talks eye-to-eye with children and with elderly people in wheelchairs.

His political vision, he says, is a "spirit of fraternity." As he explains it, this means "every person should have a bond to society by making oneself useful and being needed."

In a country with record unemployment, a chronically stagnant economy, a staggering public debt and the most aged population in world history, that vision is soon to be tested.

Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report.

Howard Kurtz: Obama's Liberal Base Loving His Cool Approach Less and Less - washingtonpost.com

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Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 31, 2009

It is as inevitable in Washington as sweltering summers and steamy sex scandals.

A president is going to be smacked around from the moment he takes office and the uplifting rhetoric of campaign rallies meets the gritty reality of governing.

But the criticism of Barack Obama has turned strikingly personal as some of his liberal media allies have gone wobbly on him. After playing a cheerleading role during the campaign, some are bluntly questioning whether he's up to the job.

If Obama is losing Paul Krugman, can the rest of the left be far behind?

"I'm concerned as to whether, in trying to reach out to the middle, he is selling out his base," says Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page. "I find myself saying, 'Where's that well-oiled Obama machine we saw last year?' . . . Maybe he's being a little too cool at this point."

David Corn, a blogger for Politics Daily, says that despite a reservoir of support for the president, some of his policies "have caused concern, if not outright anger, among certain liberal commentators and bloggers. It's been a more conventional White House than many people expected or desired. . . . He's made compromises that have some people concerned about his adherence to principle."

Perhaps that's why a recent Frank Rich column in the New York Times was headlined, "Is Obama Punking Us?"

Rich says by phone that there is "a kind of impatience" with Obama as his initiatives stall, but that the 24-hour news cycle is producing a rush to judgment just seven months into the administration.

"The big mistake made in looking at him during the campaign was that he was a wuss or an academic or professorial and couldn't rise to the occasion, and he did," Rich says. "It's too early to talk about whether he's strong enough. He's got to be pretty damn strong to have won the campaign. . . . Of course he's not the messiah. He never was going to be the messiah."

But the sense of letdown is palpable. Krugman wrote recently that "Mr. Obama was never going to get everything his supporters wanted. But there's a point at which realism shades over into weakness, and progressives increasingly feel that the administration is on the wrong side of that line."

Arianna Huffington has lamented Obama's "lack of leadership," asking: "How could someone with a renowned ability to inspire, communicate complex ideas, and connect with voters find himself in this position?" Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen has noted "his distinct coolness, an above-the-fray mien that does not communicate empathy." The Post's Eugene Robinson, writing about the White House seeming to retreat from a public health insurance option, wrote: "We didn't elect Obama to be an expedient president. We elected him to be a great one."

Robinson says now: "I'd be lying if I didn't say there was a feeling, an excitement that attended the advent of the Obama presidency, and I'm the first to say it infected me." But, he says, "I wanted to remind readers -- and if he reads the column, to remind him -- of what he said and what people voted for. . . . Any president, coming in at any time, in any context, is going to make decisions I might not like."

The White House is well aware of the diminishing enthusiasm. "I don't think anyone anticipated that we would have broad consensus on everything we did, even from our friends," deputy press secretary Bill Burton says. "People have meaningful differences with our policies. The president doesn't view his approval ratings as something to be put up on a shelf and admired."

Burton suggests a certain journalistic impatience, saying: "Do I think it's too early to say that our friends will abandon us? I certainly do."

It was liberal commentators, of course, who formed the leading edge of the most favorable coverage that any White House contender has drawn in a generation. Having swooned as they did, some were probably more susceptible to having their hearts broken.

As Lee Siegel writes in the Daily Beast, "Maybe all of us who think that making universal health care the law of the land is the most important issue of our lifetimes would not be feeling so angry and bitter if we took a step back and looked at the true cause of our rage: the liberals who raised such impossible expectations of Obama in the first place."

Obama's essential appeal in 2008 was his vow to move beyond red and blue partisanship. But that has disappointed some of the liberal pundits who thought he shared their goals. Unlike the late Ted Kennedy, who was beloved by the left, Obama had to be taken on faith.

It's easy to forget, in light of Obama's global celebrity, that five years ago he was a state senator in Illinois. Given his short tenure as a national figure, Obama finds himself having to prove, at least to the opinion-mongers, what he's really made of. "Is He Weak?" asked a recent Jim Hoagland column, on foreign policy, in The Post. One theme running through the chatter on the left is that Obama compromises too much, especially, in this view, with Republicans who have little interest in working with him.

To be sure, the liberals aren't neglecting their usual targets. In a recent Time column, Joe Klein called the GOP a "party of nihilists," adding that "the Republicans are curling themselves into a tight, white, extremist bubble."

But brickbats from your own side can inflict a greater toll. The conservative media turned on George W. Bush when he named Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, helping to doom her nomination. By the end of Bush's second term, some commentators on the right were bemoaning the president's huge increase in spending. And the lack of enthusiasm that conservative pundits displayed toward John McCain hampered him in the fall election.

The president's liberal critics tend to cluster around particular issues. Some see health reform as making or breaking Obama's first term. Others are disappointed at the pace of withdrawal from Iraq, the escalation in Afghanistan and the delay in closing Guantanamo Bay. Still others argue that Obama should be leading the charge to investigate terrorism-related abuses during the Bush administration.

For reporters and columnists alike, campaigns are an adrenaline rush and governing, in truth, is a slog. Obama's election may have spawned talk of a "post-racial" society, but that faded somewhere between the "birther" flap and the Skip Gates arrest. With his poll numbers dipping, he is increasingly depicted as a struggling salesman, unable to close the deal.

Even sympathetic commentators face an inherent tension when dealing with their side. The day after Robinson won a Pulitzer Prize in April, Obama called to congratulate him, saying his columns were "thoughtful and fair." Except, the president added, for that morning's piece on how he should have been tougher on Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, which was "complete nonsense." The two had a spirited 10-minute discussion before Obama signed off by saying Robinson's family must be proud of him.

"This is not new for me," Robinson said of the mixed reaction.

In today's hyperpartisan atmosphere, liberal pundits are likely to remain in Obama's corner. But for those who once felt a thrill up their leg, the sensation may be wearing off.

Kurtz also works for CNN as a contributor and host of its weekly media program, "Reliable Sources."

Many Women Stayed Away From the Polls In Afghanistan - washingtonpost.com

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By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 31, 2009

KABUL, Aug. 30 -- Five years ago, with the country at peace, traditional taboos easing and Western donors pushing for women to participate in democracy, millions of Afghan women eagerly registered and then voted for a presidential candidate. In a few districts, female turnout was even higher than male turnout.

But on Aug. 20, when Afghans again went to the polls to choose a president, that heady season of political emancipation seemed long gone. This time, election monitors and women's activists said, a combination of fear, tradition, apathy and poor planning conspired to deprive many Afghan women of rights they had only recently begun to exercise.

With insurgents threatening to attack polling places and voters, especially in the rural south, many families kept their women home on election day, even if the men ventured out to vote. In cities, some segregated female polling rooms were nearly empty, and many educated women who had voted or even worked at polling stations in previous elections decided not to risk going out this time.

"Everywhere I went before elections, I urged women in the villages to vote. But when the day came, even professional women in the city who normally felt free to go to work and shops and weddings stayed home. I was shocked," said Safia Siddiqui, a legislator from Nangahar province. "There has been a lot of talk about women's civic life and political movements, but security comes first."

Although no official turnout figures are available and the election results are not yet final, election monitoring groups and political activists from Taliban-plagued provinces report that in dozens of insecure districts, almost no women voted. Nationwide, they say, women's participation was much lower than in either the 2004 presidential or 2005 parliamentary elections.

The sense of eroding political rights for women did not begin with this election. In the past several years, Taliban attacks on prominent women have sent a powerful message to others who dreamed of entering public life. In the southern province of Kandahar alone, a female legislator, a women's affairs official and a female prosecutor were gunned down by terrorists. Others have received constant threats, travel with armed guards or rarely visit their constituencies.

When rural women did vote in this election, it was often by proxy, which lent itself to fraud, monitoring groups report. Monitors and others said that across the south, women's voter registration cards, which often had no photographs because of conservative taboos on women's faces being seen, were taken to the polls in batches by male relatives or tribal elders.

In some cases, they said, those same cards were used by officials or partisans to stuff ballot boxes, either for President Hamid Karzai or his top challenger, ex-foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, as well as for candidates for provincial council seats. With about one-third of the vote counted, Karzai now leads Abdullah 46.2 percent to 31.4, leaving both short of the 50 percent-plus-one-vote needed to avoid a runoff.

"Our constitution gives all men and women equal rights to vote, but in most areas that were not safe and secure, men did not let the women leave home and voted for them," said Sabrina Saghib, a member of a parliamentary committee on women's rights. "That is against the law and those votes should not be counted as women's votes."

Abdullah and Karzai have accused each other's camps of widespread election fraud. More than 2,000 complaints of fraud have been sent to the internationally led Electoral Complaints Commission, reportedly including some that describe the use of women's voting cards for ballot-box stuffing. The commission has not released any details, and it could take weeks to finish investigating the most serious claims.

A contributing factor in the low female turnout was that in many insecure areas, not enough women were willing to work at the polls as monitors or staff, so men were sent instead. That meant many families would not allow their female members to vote at those sites.

Accounts of low participation by women came from female activists and politicians in Kabul and a dozen provinces. Some described voting in short lines and empty rooms, or said they were unable to vote because of Taliban threats. Some tried to encourage local women to vote but found them afraid, confused and subject to strong family pressure to stay home.

Sahira Sharif, a women's rights activist from the southeastern province of Khost, said that in 2004 and 2005 she traveled freely across the province, talking to women about the importance of voting. This time, she said, she received support from the International Republican Institute to undertake a similar campaign but had to arrange her meetings in secret to avoid detection by the Taliban.

"It made me sad to see how far backward things have gone for women in my province in just a few years," Sharif said, adding that long distances from villages to polling stations made it especially risky for women to vote. In an ironic twist on the abuse of women's voting cards, she also said that a female candidate for Khost's provincial council took several thousand unused cards and stuffed ballot boxes for herself.

Shahazad Akbar, a staff member of the Free and Fair Election Foundation in Kabul, said her mother, a teacher, had worked as a polling official in the last election but was too fearful even to go to the polls this time. Akbar's sister knocked on doors as a campaign worker and found that most women had little idea about the election. Akbar toured several polling places in the capital and found almost no women there.

"Women feel special pressures in our society," she said. "Even in areas where you'd think women would face less obstacles, they could not get permission to go because of insecurity." In Kandahar, she said, female election observers from her organization did not tell their friends or neighbors what they were doing.

Many urban women who did go to the polls expressed a strong sense of defiance, saying they were determined not to be cowed by Taliban threats to cut off their ink-dipped fingers. But others said they were fed up with national leadership and saw no point in risking physical harm to participate.

"I voted for Mr. Karzai last time. We were all so excited then, and we thought peace would come. But now things have gotten much worse, and I decided not to vote at all," said Shuqufa, 38, a mother of five in Karte Nau, a Kabul district where suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the police station on election day. "These political leaders bring us nothing but fighting and rockets. We are fed up with the Taliban, and we are fed up with them."

The major candidates did little to appeal to the women's vote, campaigning without their wives in deference to conservative traditions. At the last moment, Abdullah and Karzai brought their wives out to vote with them, but the gesture seemed like a belated photo opportunity. Abdullah's wife was the only female voter in her polling room.

Some rights activists said the election-day chill signified a wider, continuing setback for Afghan women's role in social, political and economic life after a brief period of hope for change after the Taliban regime was ousted in late 2001. They noted that domestic violence against women is increasing, that the Taliban has attacked and shut down hundreds of girls' schools and that most women remain economically in thrall to their fathers and husbands, even when they are abused.

"Things are reverting, and it's because of a mix of insecurity, economy and culture," said Soraya Sobrang, a physician and member of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. "For a few years when security was better, women could participate in public life and the new constitution gave them political rights. But then the attacks started, and people were warned not to send their daughters to school, not to send their wives to work. All their new rights came under threat, and nothing really changed in their lives."

Now, Sobrang said, many Afghan women have lost hope.

"We have lost a lot of the ground we made. Women still face forced marriages, still work in the fields, still depend on men who beat them every day," said Sobrang, who voted on Aug. 20 in a very short line of nervous, unsmiling women. "We can give a card to a woman and tell her to vote, but that does not protect her from danger, and it does not give her any real rights at all."

Kashmiris oppose Pakistan’s Northern Areas package - Dawn

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ISLAMABAD: Kashmiri politicians opposed a Pakistani plan on Monday they say is aimed at integrating the strategic but disputed Northern Areas into Pakistan, arguing it will undermine their case for independence from India.

The Northern Areas of Gilgit and Baltistan were bundled in with Kashmir and demarcated as disputed territory under UN resolutions passed after Pakistan and India fought the first of their three wars in 1948.

Bordering China on one side and the mainly Buddhist Indian region of Ladakh on the other, Pakistan's sparsely populated Northern Areas are known to mountaineers as the home of many of the world's highest peaks.

Pakistan and India fought a brief but intense border conflict in the Kargil sector of this region in 1999.

Although Pakistan has held the northern territories since the first war with India, their status was hitherto undefined as Pakistan had not wanted to compromise its case in the broader dispute over Kashmir.

On Saturday, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani unveiled a reform package that would result in these areas having their own governor and chief minister.

The areas have also been renamed as Gilgit-Baltistan.

Amanullah Khan, leader of the pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, rejected the package, saying it appeared to be aimed at merging the disputed areas into Pakistan.

‘We strongly condemn this package. It will harm the interests of Pakistan as well as Kashmiris,’ he told Reuters.

‘It looks like they are integrating these areas into Pakistan as done by India.’

‘Suspicious, unacceptable’

Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan, a pro-Pakistan politician and a former prime minister of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, also expressed reservations about the package.

‘We support internal autonomy for these areas...but such moves to unilaterally alter the status of these areas and gradually give them the status of a province are suspicious and unacceptable,’ he said.

The roughly 1.5 million people of Gilgit and Baltistan largely oppose integration into Kashmir and demand the territory be merged into Pakistan and declared a separate province.

Officials in the past had stonewalled on this demand because it would have diluted Pakistan's demand for implementation of a UN-mandated plebiscite to allow the people of Kashmir to determine their own future.

Pakistani-administered Kashmir, known as Azad Kashmir, enjoys some sort of self-rule with its own government, parliament and flag, but the Northern Areas are directly ruled by Islamabad.

India holds about 45 per cent of Kashmir and Pakistan more than a third. China controls the remainder.

Analysts say the reform package appears to be aimed at striking a balance between giving some sort of internal autonomy to the Northern Areas without undermining Pakistan's position on the Kashmir dispute.

‘They have met the demands of people of the Northern Areas on a limited scale,’ said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a political analyst.

‘It's a mid-way house. They will give them some concessions and then will wait and see what happens to the Kashmir issue.’

RI should not use reactive nationalism against Malaysia : observer - Antara

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Jakarta (ANTARA News) - A socio-economic observer has warned Indonesian people not to be trapped in what he called "reactive nationalism" or "suicidal nationalism" in responding to the various provocations by Malaysia.

"What we need in facing Malaysia is common-sense nationalism," Fajroel Rachman, chairman of the non-governmental organization "Pedoman Indonesia" said here Monday commenting on the neighboring country`s provocations against Indonesia ranging from making claims on Indonesian arts and culture to persecution of Indonesian migrant workers (TKI).

According to Rachman, the preferred way to settle the problem with Malaysia should be negotiations.

Therefore, Rachman expressed disagreement if the Indonesian people later take emotional or provocative steps let alone armed actions under the once-popular slogan of "Crush Malaysia".

He stressed that the government should immediately form a special team to be led directly by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and Foreign Minister acting as chairman and assisted by legal team, artists and cultural experts.

In the meantime, about the Indonesian migrant workers who experienced the persecution in Malaysia, Rachman said, it should be delegated to the Malaysian courts, but the Indonesia Embassy in Kuala Lumpur must also provide physical protection and law to the migrant workers.

Fadjroel further said that Malaysia is only a small and monarchic country that is not too concerned about human right issues, while Indonesia is a large and democratic country.

"If Indonesia is well managed, then our competitors are only China, India and Brazil, not Malaysia. So, do not be trapped," he added.

In the meantime, the Indonesian minister of culture and tourism Jero Wacik said on Thursday (Aug.27) that Malaysia had offered an apology over the "Pendet" traditional dance controversy.

"Just now in the afternoon the Malaysian minister of tourism called me to offer an apology over the Pendet case," he said.

The minister said the apology was offered in connection with the depiction without permit of a Balinese "Pendet" welcome dance in the Enigmatic Malaysia tourism advertisement program broadcast in the Discovery Channel.

He admitted that the apology was offered verbally but he hoped an official reply would be given by the Malaysian government to the Indonesian government following its complaint over the issue submitted recently.(*)