Pakistan said yesterday it was racing to help refugees fleeing its military offensive — an exodus of some 1.5 million with a speed and size the UN said could rival the displacement caused by Rwanda’s genocide.
Lieutenant General Nadeem Ahmed, who leads a group tasked with dealing with the uprooted Pakistanis, told reporters that the government had enough flour and other food for the displaced but said it needed donations of fans and high energy biscuits.
He also said the refugees would get money and free transport when it was safe enough to return.
A “camp is not a replacement for home,” Ahmed said, adding there were at least 22 relief camps operating.
UN officials said on Monday that nearly 1.5 million people had fled their homes in Pakistan this month.
“It has been a long time since there has been a displacement this big,” said Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the UN refugee agency.
Earlier offensives had caused another 550,000 people to flee, though Ahmed said yesterday that 230,000 people had returned to Bajur, a tribal region overrun by the Taliban and targeted in a lengthy military operation.
In trying to recall another such displacement in so short a period, Redmond said: “It could go back to Rwanda,” referring to the 1994 massacre of ethnic Tutsis by the majority Hutus in the African country.
The genocide displaced some 2 million people.
The UN believes that around 15 percent to 20 percent of the Pakistani displaced are in camps at the moment. Around 250,000 Pakistanis are in 24 camps, UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said.
Most others are probably staying with host families or at rented accommodation or other places.
Holmes’ estimate appeared at odds with a UN statement that said 130,950 people had been registered in camps. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the difference.
“The situation is volatile and changing rapidly,” Holmes told reporters at UN headquarters in New York.
Redmond, speaking in Geneva, said a lack of help for the displaced and the many thousands of families hosting them could cause more “political destabilization” for the country.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday declared martial law in an unannounced late night address broadcast live on YTN television. Yoon said he had no choice but to resort to such a measure in order to safeguard free and constitutional order, saying opposition parties have taken hostage of the parliamentary process to throw the country into a crisis. "I declare martial law to protect the free Republic of Korea from the threat of North Korean communist forces, to eradicate the despicable pro-North Korean anti-state forces that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our people, and to protect the free
The US deployed a reconnaissance aircraft while Japan and the Philippines sent navy ships in a joint patrol in the disputed South China Sea yesterday, two days after the allied forces condemned actions by China Coast Guard vessels against Philippine patrol ships. The US Indo-Pacific Command said the joint patrol was conducted in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone by allies and partners to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight “ and “other lawful uses of the sea and international airspace.” Those phrases are used by the US, Japan and the Philippines to oppose China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the
A string of rape and assault allegations against the son of Norway’s future queen have plunged the royal family into its “biggest scandal” ever, wrapping up an annus horribilis for the monarchy. The legal troubles surrounding Marius Borg Hoiby, the 27-year-old son born of a relationship before Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s marriage to Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon, have dominated the Scandinavian country’s headlines since August. The tall strapping blond with a “bad boy” look — often photographed in tuxedos, slicked back hair, earrings and tattoos — was arrested in Oslo on Aug. 4 suspected of assaulting his girlfriend the previous night. A photograph
‘KAMPAI’: It is said that people in Japan began brewing rice about 2,000 years ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol Traditional Japanese knowledge and skills used in the production of sake and shochu distilled spirits were approved on Wednesday for addition to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, a committee of the UN cultural body said It is believed people in the archipelago began brewing rice in a simple way about two millennia ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol. By about 1000 AD, the imperial palace had a department to supervise the manufacturing of sake and its use in rituals, the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association said. The multi-staged brewing techniques still used today are
RSS