| Taliban warns US over Afghan war | ||
A senior Taliban commander has warned the United States that it will be defeated in Afghanistan, even if it sends an extra 200,000 US troops. Located in the so-called valley of death near the border with Pakistan, Taliban fighters vowed to fight to the very end. Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra reports from Kabul, the Afghan capital. | ||
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Friday, 18 December 2009
Taliban warns US over Afghan war
Apostates report about Martyr’s attack on “police” checkpoint in Nazran
Apostates report about Martyr’s attack on “police” checkpoint in Nazran
Publication time: Today at 01:53 Djokhar time
In Nazran, a “police” checkpoint was blown up, according to occupier sources with references on statement of apostates. Explosion took place on the so-called Ekajevo roundabout, when dozens of “policemen” gathered on DPS gang’s checkpoint, in order to carry out measures against cars without number plates and tinted windows.
The statement says that a black “Lada Priora” car with “Chechen number plates”, drove into the gathering of policemen, after which a powerful explosion took place.
Apostates claim, that as a result of attack 20 “policemen” were wounded, 4 of whom are in a critical condition.
It is also claimed, that “a number of civilians were wounded”, including 3 children.
According to other reports, the checkpoint was manned by Ingush apostates, as well as Russian kafirs. Also, a military convoy was passing by the checkpoint during the attack.
KC
Occupiers openly blew up family of murdered opposition leader M. Aushev
Occupiers openly blew up family of murdered opposition leader M. Aushev
Publication time: 17 December 2009, 14:38
On Wednesday Russian sources reporting from puppet “police” of Ingushetia, informed that near a checkpoint on the road towards Magas, a car blew up with 4 passengers.
According to the apostate version, on approaching the checkpoint, the car suddenly turned around and started driving in the opposite direction.
“Police” opened fire and the car blew up. As a result 2 people were killed and 2 were wounded.
Later, however, it became known that the apostate version was a complete lie.
In reality, a car carrying pregnant wife of murdered Maksharip Aushev, her mother and two brothers, was stopped on the checkpoint.
After a formal ID check, and search in the vehicle, the driver and passengers sat in the car, and drove away and at this moment the explosion took place.
The pregnant wife of Maksharip and her brother were taken to a hospital in a critical condition, while her other brother and mother died on the spot.
It will be recalled that the human rights activist and opposition leader Maksharip Aushev was killed in
Earlier Russian occupiers tried to kidnap him on the road out of Magas, after his meeting with apostate ringleader Evkurov.
On December 10,
In response, as opposition agency Ingushetiyaru.org writes, Kremlin “awarded the family of Aushev with a bomb”.
Department of monitoring
KC
Clock ticking on climate accord
| Clock ticking on climate accord | |||||||||||
Negotiators from countries attending climate talks in Denmark remain deadlocked on the terms of a draft accord, as scores of world leaders prepare to attend the summit's final day. Diplomats had said that leaders and ministers from 30 countries had reached agreement on some elements of a deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions, after talks that ended early on Friday. The draft deal set a cap of two degrees Celsius on global temperature rises, and provides at least $100bn for poor countries to help them cope with the effects of rising temperatures and seas. "There are deep differences in opinion and view on how we should solve this. We'll try our best, until the last minutes of this conference," Fredrik Reinfeldt, Swedens's prime minister, said after the overnight talks ended.
A senior Indian negotiator said that there was "no agreement on even what to call the text - a declaration, a statement or whatever. They [developed nations] want to make it a politically binding document which we oppose." A negotiator for developing countries told Reuters that developed nations had offered to cut their carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. That proposal was dismissed by developing nations. Elusive deal Barack Obama, the US president, arrived in Copenhagen for the climax of the summit on Friday, joining head of state and government from about 120 nations. The US was widely condemned for foot-dragging on climate change under former president George Bush, and Obama is hoping his presence at the summit's finale will demonstrate an about-turn in US policy.
Negotiators from 193 nations in total have been trying to hammer out a pact on carbon emissions for the last two weeks, but an agreement has so far proved elusive. Al Jazeera obtained on Thursday an internal UN document which indicates that even the best pledges being offered to cut emissions may not be enough to curb global warming. The document, marked confidential and dated December 15 at 11pm, says the cuts offered so far at the summit will not prevent a rise in global temperatures of around 3C. According to scientists, such a rise would be disastrous, condemning hundreds of millions of people to worsening drought, floods and storms. A long list of world leaders, including many from nations most at risk from rising sea levels, have been pushing for delegates meeting in the Danish capital to limit the rise to between 1.5 and 2C. Fund pledge Obama's attendance at the summit follows a pledge from Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, to contribute to a long-term fund worth $100bn a year by 2020 to help poor countries fund cleaner technology and shore up defences against worsening floods, drought, storms and rising seas.
Clinton also accused developing nations of backsliding on pledges to open their emissions control to scrutiny. "There have been occasions in this past year when all the major economies have committed to transparency," Clinton told a press conference on Thursday. "Now that we are trying to define what transparency means and how we would both implement it and observe it, there's a backing away from transparency - and that to us is something that undermines the whole effort that we're engaged in," she said. Clinton said any deal that did not have sufficient transparency for all parties would be a "deal-breaker" for the US. 'Facing failure' China and India, two of the world's biggest and fastest-growing carbon emitters, say they are willing to take voluntary measures to slow their growth of gas emissions. But they are reluctant to accept tough international inspection and insist rich nations shoulder the main burden by accepting huge reduction targets. "We should not continue to dwell on these issues that are dividing us. We should narrow our differences, otherwise we are facing a failure," He Yafei, China's vice foreign minister, told reporters.
But in the run-up to Friday's final day, the tone of government briefings indicated that few delegations were optimistic that a last-minute significant breakthrough was possible. "Coming back with an empty agreement would be far worse than coming back empty-handed," Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, told reporters before Obama left Washington. Jose Manuel Barroso, the EU Commission chief, said he expected Obama to announce further US action to push things forward "because if they don't do it, others will find an excuse also not to move." Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, said on Thursday that the world faced a looming disaster if the summit failed to break the deadlock over carbon emissions. "There is less than 24 hours. If we carry on like this, it will be a failure," he said. "Failure at Copenhagen would be catastrophic for all of us." 'Critical juncture' On Thursday Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, warned prospects for a deal were "not good" as she criticised emissions pledges made by industrial nations as insufficient. However Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, was more optimistic, looking to talk up the prospects of an agreement saying he had "not seen anything that indicates we cannot seal a deal." "There are more than 130 leaders here. If they cannot seal a deal, who can?" Rasmussen, who is also chairing the conference, said on Thursday the climate summit - widely-touted as the last chance for a global deal - was "at a critical juncture". "Now we rely on the willingness of all parties to take that extra step that would enable us to make the deal that is expected of us," he said. | |||||||||||
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Pakistan minister faces arrest bid
| Pakistan minister faces arrest bid | |||
Pakistani authorities have issued an arrest warrant for the country's interior minister on corruption charges, following a supreme court ruling that nullified a deal granting officials amnesty from criminal investigations. The warrant for Rehman Malik's arrest was issued by the National Accountability Office on Friday, two days after the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) was declared void and unconstitutional. Imran Khan, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad, said that the warrant was the first to be issued againsty a senior official since the NRO was ruled illegal. "Rehman Malik had a number of cases against him. The key one is something called the 'yellow cab' scheme. There were financial irregularities declared against him, that he was involved in handing out loans for yellow cabs," Khan said. "He was convicted in that case and he appealed it. The appeal was going through when on, October 5, 2007, the NRO came into effect. "That [ordinace] was struck down [this week], so that case has been re-opened." Resignations demanded The Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), Pakistan's main opposition party, has called on Asif Ali Zardari, the country's president, to resign after the supreme court's ruling. "On the moral ground, he should realise that in this situation he is no longer able to effectively run the government, run the country, [or] represent Pakistan within Pakistan or outside," Raja Zafarul-Haq, the chairman of the PML-N, told Al Jazeera. He said that his party was "not in a hurry" to call for Zardari's impeachment, but warned: "Maybe there will be a public reaction if he decides not to step down." Earlier, Khawaja Asif, a senior leader PML-N leader, said: "It will be in his own interest, it will be in the interest of his party and it will be good for the system." Pakistan's constitution guarantees Zardari immunity while in office. But the constitution also states that presidential candidates must be pious, honest and truthful and not have been convicted in a criminal case. Pakistan's anti-corruption body has called for travel bans to be imposed on more than 250 people since the supreme court ruling. Ahmed Mukhtar, the country's defence minister, told local television late on Thursday that he had been due to go on an official visit to China but that his name had been put on an "exit control list" restricting travel. "I was informed that my name is on the exit list ... federal investigation authorities officials have said that I cannot leave the country," he said. "It was in connection with a corruption case. But there is no corruption case against me - it is only an inquiry which is pending against me for the past 12 years. I will strongly defend myself in the court." Cases expected The supreme court's decision on Wednesday declaring the amnesty agreement as being unconstitutional paves the way for corruption cases against Zardari and thousands of other officials covered by the amnesty to be revived. A number of cases were pending against Zardari when it was announced by Pervez Musharraf, then Pakistan's president, that he and others would be immune from prosecution under the 2007 National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO). Musharraf declared the NRO while under pressure to hold elections and end eight years of military rule. Although Zardari has spent years in jail over corruption charges, he alleges the charges were politically-motivated and questions hang over whether he was ever actually convicted. Zardari's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) won elections in 2008, restoring civilian rule, but the NRO expired at the end of last month and the PPP did not have enough support to renew the ordinance in parliament. Zardari already faces low public approval ratings and any political trouble in Pakistan is likely to be watched very closely by the West which wants Islamabad to focus on combating Islamist fighters. | |||
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'Mumbai gunman' retracts confession
| 'Mumbai gunman' retracts confession | |||
A man accused of taking part in a deadly siege in the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008 has retracted his confession, claiming that police tortured him into admitting his role in the attacks. Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, told the judge in a special court on Friday that he came to Mumbai as a tourist and was arrested 20 days before the siege began. Kasab can be seen carrying an assault rifle in photographs taken during the three-day siege of Mumbai's main train station, one of several sites targeted by the gunmen. One hundred and sixty-six people died in the attacks, which saw 10 men with assault rifles storming two luxury hotels, a Jewish centre and the train station. Nine of the gunmen were killed. Kasab said that police took him from his cell on the day the attacks started because he resembled one of the gunmen. He claims that they shot him to make it look as if he had been involved in the attacks and re-arrested him. Kasab said he was initially brought into police custody after wandering around the city late at night, looking for a place to stay. His Pakistani citizenship aroused suspicion, he said. Kasab, who earlier confessed to opening fire on people inside the station, could face the death penalty if convicted. | |||
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US spy drone videos 'hacked'
| US spy drone videos 'hacked' | |||
Fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan have been able to use low cost software downloaded from the internet to hack into live video feeds from unmanned US surveillance aircraft, a military official has said. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior US defence official told the Associated Press the fighters could view feeds from Predator drones - the US military's eyes in the sky for intelligence gathering - but could not take control of the aircraft or jam its electronic signals. The fighters reportedly used software that costs less than $30 to hack into the video feed from the drones. The Wall Street Journal first reported on Thursday that Shia fighters in Iraq had used software programs such as SkyGrabber, available for as little as $25.95 on the internet, to regularly capture drone video feeds. According to the paper the issue came to light when the US military in Iraq apprehended a fighter whose laptop contained files of intercepted drone video feeds. In recent months the US military has also reportedly found evidence of at least one instance where fighters in Afghanistan also monitored US drone video feeds. Encryption The interception is possible because communications links with the remotely flown planes are unprotected. Officials said when the intercepts were discovered in July last year, the Pentagon began a programme to start encrypting all of its drone video feeds from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, there are at least 600 unmanned vehicles along with thousands of ground stations to address and the upgrade is expected to take some time to complete. Dale Meyerrose, a former chief information officer for the US intelligence community, compared the problem to street criminals listening to police scanners. "This was just one of the signals, a broadcast signal, and there was no hacking," he told the Associated Press. The US Predator drone, also currently used in Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere, can fly for hours remotely controlled by pilots thousands of kilometers away. It can fly armed or unarmed, and is part of a growing arsenal of such aircraft that includes the Reaper and Raven as well as a new, high-tech video sensor system called the Gorgon Stare, being installed on Reapers. | |||
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CIA linked to Palestinian 'torture'
| CIA linked to Palestinian 'torture' | ||||
Palestinian security agents who have allegedly tortured Hamas supporters in the West Bank have been working closely with the CIA, the UK's Guardian newspaper has reported. The US Central Intelligence Agency has co-operated with the Preventive Security Force (PSF) and General Intelligence Service (GI) in the Palestinian territory, the report on Friday said. "The [Central Intelligence] Agency consider them as their property, those two Palestinian services," a western official told the Guardian. Most of the detained Hamas supporters are held without trial and allegedly tortured by the Palestinian agencies in the West Bank. Hamas, which has de facto control of the Gaza Strip, has faced allegations that its forces have detained and tortured people allied with Fatah, a rival Palestinian group that is a member of the PA. Human rights organisations say it is common for detainees to be badly beaten and subjected to "shabeh", where they are shackled and held in painful positions for long periods. Hundreds held Between 400 and 500 Hamas supporters are currently being held by the PSF and GI, officials from the PA have said. But Adnan Aldenari, a Palestinian police spokesman, denied that the security forces in the West Bank were abusing detainees. "We have nothing to hide; or nothing to be ashamed of. When we had mistakes [they] were individual as committed by some officers and not expressive of our policy.
The Guardian reported that at least three detainees have died in custody this year due to being mistreated. The most recent was Haitham Amr, a 33-year-old nurse from Hebron, who died four days after he was detained by GI officials last June, the newspaper said. Shawan Jabarin, the general director of al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organisation, told the Guardian: "The Americans could stop it any time. All they would have to do is go to [prime minister] Salam Fayyad and tell him they were making it an issue. "Then they could deal with the specifics: they could tell him that detainees needed to be brought promptly before the courts." A regional diplomat told the newspaper that "at the very least" US intelligence officers were aware of the torture and were not doing enough to stop it. The CIA does not deny working with the PSF and GI in the West Bank, but Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesman, said that the US agency does not hold a supervisory role. "The notion that this agency somehow runs other intelligence services ... is simply wrong," he told the Guardian. "The CIA ... only supports, and is interested in, lawful methods that produce sound intelligence." | ||||
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Major Afghan assault launched
| Major Afghan assault launched | |||
A major operation involving more than 1,100 soldiers, including 800 French legionnaires as well as US and Afghan commandos, has been launched east of the Afghan capital, the AFP news agency has reported. Uzbeen Valley is a Taliban stronghold where 10 French soldiers were killed in an ambush in August 2008. Septentrion comes weeks after Barack Obama, the US president, announced he was sending 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan, but also said they would begin to pull out by mid-2011. |
Karzai replacement plan 'a phoney'
| Karzai replacement plan 'a phoney' | |||||||
A former senior UN official in Afghanistan has rejected as "complete phoney" reports that he drafted a plan to be put to the White House for replacing Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president. Peter Galbraith, who had been the second-highest United Nations official in Kabul, was sacked from his post in September. He claimed that colleagues - including the head of the UN mission in Afghanistan - had mishandled allegations of fraud during the Afghan election. The alleged plan to replace Karzai was first reported in the New York Times on Thursday, which attributed the claims to senior UN and US officials. But speaking to Al Jazeera on Thursday, Galbraith said the story was "a phoney which was being put out for the purposes of obscuring the real issue - the mishandling of the elections by the United Nations". 'Cover-up' The UN, Galbraith said, had failed "to take steps that might have prevented the fraud in the Afghan elections" and then afterwards decided to try to cover it up.
Galbraith left Afghanistan in early September after the first round of the country's presidential elections and was fired from his post weeks later. He has accused Kai Eide, the Norwegian diplomat heading the UN mission in Afghanistan, of trying to conceal the degree of fraud in favour of Karzai's re-election. In October, after Galbraith was sacked, a UN audit stripped Karzai of almost a third of the votes he had taken in the first round, forcing him into a second-round run-off. However, days later Karzai was re-appointed to office uncontested after his rival, Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew from the run-off, citing widespread corruption. Taliban 'victory' Speaking from Bergen in Norway, Galbraith said the UN's handling of the elections had become a "huge issue" in determining the future direction of Afghanistan.
The vote, he said, had resulted in "a prolonged and unnecessary political crisis, and it need not have occurred had the UN done its job and insisted on honest elections." According to the New York Times, Eide, who is set to leave his job as head of the UN mission in Afghanistan by early 2010, said Galbraith's departure came immediately after he rejected a proposal to replace Karzai and install a more Western-friendly figure. Eide was quoted as saying he had told Galbraith the plan was "unconstitutional, it represented interference of the worst sort, and if pursued it would provoke not only a strong international reaction" but also civil insurrection. | |||||||
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Colombia rebels 'to join forces'
| Colombia rebels 'to join forces' | ||||
Colombia's two biggest rebel movements have said they will join forces after years of being pushed onto the defensive by the US-backed policies of Alvaro Uribe, the Colombian president. In a joint statement on Thursday the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) said they would unite with "force and belligerence" against Uribe. "We are on our way toward working for unity," said the statement signed by the FARC and ELN, both of whom have been blacklisted as terrorist groups by the US. "Our only enemy is North American Imperialism and its oligarchic lackeys," read the statement published on the ANNCOL news agency website, often the first to carry Colombian rebel statements. The two groups have deep ideological differences and have often clashed in the past but now appear willing to consider uniting for the sake of survival. The FARC-ELN statement was released shortly after Colombia's air force said it had killed a key FARC commander and nine of his bodyguards in a bombing raid carried out in the mountainous northwest of the country. The death of Ruben Garcia, a FARC leader also known as Danilo, was the latest blow to the guerrilla movement. Rebels weakened
The ELN, which claims to have 5,000 fighters, was formed by left-wing Roman Catholic priests inspired by the liberation theology movement in the 1960s. The FARC, according to official estimates, has about 9,000 fighters and started as a hardcore pro-Soviet communist organisation before getting involved in extortion of local communities, drug trafficking and kidnapping. Francisco Santos, the Colombian vice-president, was dismissive of the group's threat to escalate their fight against the government. "You don't answer terrorists with anything other than force," Santos told reporters in response to the FARC-ELN statement. Many analysts say the two groups have become increasingly isolated because of the government crackdown and that it is too late for the groups to mount any significant threat, adding that the rebels are only considering an alliance as a matter of survival. | ||||
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S Korea hands N Korea H1N1 aid
| S Korea hands N Korea H1N1 aid | |||
A convoy of South Korean trucks have crossed the border into North Korea to deliver H1N1 flu medicine. The delivery across the heavily armed border on Friday came a day after North Korea threatened retaliation over what it claimed were South Korean naval drills around their disputed sea border, accusing Seoul of attempting to escalate tension. South Korea sent enough doses of the antiviral drugs Tamiflu and Relenza for 500,000 North Koreans, according to Seoul's unification ministry. The shipment marks the South Korean government's first humanitarian aid since Lee Myung-bak, the South Korean president, took office in early 2008. Lee Myung-bak had pledged to pursue a hardline policy toward the North and hold it accountable for its nuclear disarmament promises. Unconditional aid North Korea acknowledged for the first time last week that H1N1 flu had broken out in the country, after Seoul offered unconditional aid to help contain the spread of the virus. The North did not mention any virus-related deaths, but a Seoul-based civic group claimed that the disease had killed about 50 people in the North since early November. Kim Young Il, the chief of humanitarian support at the ministry, said his government decided to provide H1N1 medicine in a " humanitarian manner". The delivery was a sign that South Korean government cared about the North Korean people's well-being, he said. The aid, accompanied by South Korean doctors, was loaded onto refrigerated trucks in Dorasan and transported across the border to Kaesong city in North Korea. 'Act of crime' North's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Thursday cited an unidentified source as saying that the South Korean military staged underwater explosive exercises around the border - the scene of a naval clash last month that left one North Korean sailor dead and three others wounded. The drills represented "a threat and an unpardonable act of crime against us," KCNA said. South Korea said the drills were routine and took place in the South's waters. The North does not recognise the sea boundary between itself and the South, drawn by the United Nations at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, and has long claimed that it should be redrawn farther south. The dispute led to deadly skirmishes in 1999, 2002 and last month. Relations between the two Koreas soured badly after Lee halted unconditional aid to the North in line with his pledge to get tough on his communist neighbour over its nuclear weapons development. | |||
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France urged to end 'anti-Muslim' identity debate
France urged to end 'anti-Muslim' identity debate
December 17, 2009 - 03:53
December 17, 2009 - 03:53
 French President Nicolas Sarkozy faced calls Wednesday to scrap his debate on national identity after a minister's blunt remarks about young Muslims touched off a furore. Families Minister Nadine Morano told a local gathering called to discuss what it means to be French that she wanted young Muslims to "love France, find a job, not speak slang nor wear their caps back to front". Anti-racism groups and the Socialist opposition quickly condemned her comments and said it was time to end a debate that they see as fomenting anti-foreigner and anti-Muslim sentiment in France. "Enough," said former Socialist leader Francois Hollande. "This debate was badly defined, poorly chosen from the start, and now it is going to the dogs." Doubts emerged within Sarkozy's camp with Higher Education Minister Valerie Pecresse saying there was a need to "shift the focus toward concrete proposals" to prevent the debate from further spinning out of control. Sarkozy's long-time rival in the governing right-wing party, former prime minister Dominique de Villepin, also said it was time to bring the curtain down on this "bad debate". "During these times of economic crisis, we have better things to do than allow ourselves to be divided over such an important issue," Villepin said. After initially supporting the government-sponsored debate, Le Monde newspaper joined calls for burying it, writing in an editorial that "the great debate on national identity has turned sour". Le Monde called on Sarkozy to acknowledge that he had made a "mistake and correct it". But the government responded with a flat-out refusal, with a spokesman saying that scrapping the debate was "out of the question". "We wanted this debate to be held in a decentralised manner, and that there be no taboo subjects. We will carry it to its end," said spokesman Luc Chatel. Launched with great fanfare a month ago, the government is asking citizens from across the country to explain what it means to be French on an Internet forum and at town hall meetings. The initiative ignited controversy from the outset, with the left accusing Sarkozy of trying to woo far-right voters ahead of March regional elections by appealing to French pride and patriotism. The debate is scheduled to end on February 4 with a national conference during which the government is to take stock of the various views submitted and make recommendations. Sarkozy has defended the initiative as a "noble" exercise to define Frenchness but leading intellectuals such as the winner of this year's Goncourt literature prize, Marie Ndiaye, have branded it xenophobic and called for a boycott. On Wednesday, Morano defended her remarks and said those who criticised her "did not want to open their eyes to the integration problems that our young people in the suburbs are having". The controversy followed an outcry two weeks ago after a right-wing mayor said France had too many immigrants and that this problem had been swept under the carpet for too long. "It's time we reacted because we are going to be eaten alive," said Andre Valentin, mayor of a small village in northern France. "There are already 10 million of them, 10 million who are getting paid to do nothing." France has been engaged in a long-running debate about how far it is willing to go to accommodate Islam, which now ranks as the nation's second religion with some six million Muslims. France's debate was given urgency by a Swiss referendum vote to ban minaret construction that came as a French parliamentary panel held hearings on whether to ban the full Islamic veil. Parliament's "burqa commission" and the Swiss ban on minarets have shifted the focus from broader issues of identity to French fears about immigration and Islam. |
EU Muslims Face Growing Discrimination: OSI
EU Muslims Face Growing Discrimination: OSI
December 17, 2009 - 03:53
December 17, 2009 - 03:53
 CAIRO — Muslims are facing growing discrimination across Europe despite their sense of belonging to the countries where they live, an international policy institute has said, urging swift action to tackle the issue. "The findings of this report are consistent with other research and suggest that levels of religious discrimination directed towards Muslims are widespread and have increased in the past five years," the Open Society Institute said in a study published on Tuesday, December 15, on its website. The OSI report, funded by George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist, was conducted over two and a half years, involving 2,200 in-depth interviews and 60 focus groups in 11 cities across Europe. "There are also low levels of trust among young European-born Muslim men, who experience the greatest amount of discrimination and unfair treatment at the hands of the police." The report notes that even Muslim pupils are not immune from such discrimination. "Some Muslim pupils continue to suffer from prejudice and low expectations from teachers." The EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) said in a report issued last May that nearly one third of Muslims in the European Union have been discriminated against in 2008. "There is very little official data available on Europe's Muslim and minority populations," says Nazia Hussain, director of OSI's At Home in Europe project. "What does exist is either anecdotal or extrapolated and contributes to an inaccurate picture of Muslim communities and minorities in Europe and a lack of understanding of the experiences and concerns of these communities." The OSI estimates that between 15 and 20 million Muslims are living in Europe, though many believe the actual number is much higher. Disadvantages The OSI report said many Muslims in Europe still suffer unfair treatment along with social and economic disadvantages. "Muslims are almost three times more likely to be unemployed than non-Muslims," it said. "Women are discriminated against in the labor market if they wear the veil." European Muslims also suffer higher poverty rates than their non-Muslim compatriots. The OSI refuted allegations that Muslims in European countries tend to live in separated ghettos. "Discrimination in housing restricts choices of where many Muslims across Europe can live." The OSI also criticized the media coverage of Muslim-related issues. "The enormous media scrutiny of Muslims in different European countries has involved the negative reinforcement of stereotypes and prejudices." A recent British study accused the media and film industry of perpetuating Islamophobia and prejudice by demonizing Muslims and Arabs as violent, dangerous and threatening people. Famed US academic Stephen Schwartz had also criticized the Western media for failing to meet the challenge of reporting on Islam after 9/11. The OSI warned that the current attitude is creating a barrier for Muslim integration. "Policymakers should promote equal treatment that addresses discrimination based on religion and belief in education, housing and the provision of goods and services." |
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