Chinese miners freed after 25 days in flooded mine

By HENRY SANDERSON, Associated Press Writer

BEIJING – Three miners survived 25 days trapped in a flooded mine in southern China by drinking dirty water and chewing coal before rescuers burrowed through a collapsed tunnel to reach them, a local official and state media said Monday.

The men and 13 others became stuck when the Xinqiao Coal Mine flooded June 17. On Sunday, rescue workers digging into the mountainside cleared a path to the miners and saw their lights, which still gave off a dim glow, said Wang Guangneng, a Communist Party spokesman in the Guizhou province county of Qinglong.

The miners stayed alive by drinking water that seeped through the earth, Wang said. The official Xinhua News Agency cited a rescuer saying that oxygen was also able to get into the tunnel easily.

They also chewed on coal to stave off their appetite, the Guiyang Evening News, based in the provincial capital, reported.

It was not clear whether the men had any information on the others still missing. Rescuers had found the body of one miner a week after the flooding, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

A Xinhua photo showed one of the rescued miners, Wang Kuangwei, his bones prominent through his skin, getting medical attention Sunday, with his eyes covered to protect them from the light. The party spokesman said the three men were in stable condition.

During an interview with Shenzhen Media Group television, one of the miners, 36-year old Zhao Weixing, who was lying down with his eyes and face covered, told reporters: "I feel OK."

The miners' rescue after 604 hours underground was a rare tale of survival in China's coal mines, the world's deadliest, where an average of 13 workers are killed every day. Most accidents are blamed on failures to follow safety rules, including a lack of required ventilation or fire control equipment.

In August 2007, two brothers were forced to chew on coal and sip their own urine from discarded water bottles after nearly six days in a mine tunnel. They even managed to crack jokes during that time about their wives remarrying after they were declared dead.

In Sunday's rescue, the miners — all of whom were from central Henan province — were found 500 to 600 yards (meters) from the entrance to the mine shaft, on a level intersection that protected them from the flood, the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper reported. The ceiling had collapsed, blocking a path to the tunnel opening.

The county's head of work safety, Li Xingwei, was digging a channel into the mountain and found an unblocked pathway, then noticed the miners' lights, the newspaper said.

"We crept along the tunnel in excitement," Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying.

Rescuers shouted to the men to remain calm, the Beijing Youth Daily report said.

Once rescued, it said, the miners did nothing but ask for water.

Demjanjuk charged in Germany over WWII killings

By ROLAND LOSCH, Associated Press Writer

MUNICH – German prosecutors formally charged John Demjanjuk on Monday with 27,900 counts of being an accessory to murder at a Nazi death camp during World War II.

The charges against the 89-year-old retired auto worker, who was deported from the U.S. in May, were filed at a Munich state court, prosecutors in the city said in a brief statement.

Doctors cleared the way for formal charges earlier this month, determining that Demjanjuk (dem-YAHN'-yuk) was fit to stand trial so long as court hearings do not exceed two 90-minute sessions per day.

The court must now decide whether to accept the charges — usually a formality — and set a date for the trial. Court spokeswoman Margarete Noetzel said the trial was unlikely to start before the autumn.

Demjanjuk lawyer Guenther Maull had no immediate comment on the charges, saying he had not yet seen them.

Charges of accessory to murder carry a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison in Germany.

Prosecutors accuse Demjanjuk of serving as a guard at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943.

Demjanjuk, a native of Ukraine, says he was a Red Army soldier who spent the war as a prisoner of war and never hurt anyone.

But Nazi-era documents obtained by U.S. justice authorities and shared with German prosecutors include a photo ID identifying Demjanjuk as a guard at the Sobibor death camp and saying he was trained at an SS facility for Nazi guards at Trawniki, also in Nazi-occupied Poland. U.S. and German experts have declared the ID genuine.

Demjanjuk gained U.S. citizenship in 1958. The U.S. Justice Department moved to revoke the citizenship in 1977, alleging he hid his past as a Nazi death camp guard, and it was revoked in 1981.

Demjanjuk was tried in Israel over accusations that he was the notorious "Ivan the Terrible" at the Treblinka death camp in Poland. He was found guilty in 1988 of war crimes and crimes against humanity but the conviction was overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court.

That decision came after Israel won access to Soviet archives, which had depositions given after the war by 37 Treblinka guards and forced laborers who said "Ivan" was a different Ukrainian named Ivan Marchenko.

Demjanjuk's U.S. citizenship was restored in 1998. However, a U.S. judge revoked it again in 2002 based on fresh Justice Department evidence showing he concealed his service at Sobibor and other Nazi-run death and forced-labor camps from immigration officials.

A U.S. immigration judge ruled in 2005 he could be deported to Germany, Poland or Ukraine. Munich prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for him in March.

They accused him in that warrant of being an accessory to murder in 29,000 cases. However, that number was reduced in the charges because, of the people transported to Sobibor, "many did not survive the journey," said Anton Winkler, a spokesman for Munich prosecutors.

Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi-hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, welcomed the filing of formal charges.

"This is obviously an important step forward," Zuroff said by telephone from Jerusalem. "We hope that the trial itself will be expedited so that justice will be achieved and he can be given the appropriate punishment."

"The effort to bring Demjanjuk to justice sends a very powerful message that the passage of time in no way diminishes the guilt of the perpetrator," Zuroff said.

China says police kill 2 Uighur men, wound third

URUMQI, China – China's government says police shot dead two Uighur men and wounded a third after the men attacked officers who were breaking up "a violent incident."

A government official in the western city of Urumqi who would give only his surname Fan said Monday that police were attacked after they stopped the three men from assaulting another man with knives and rods.

The incident in front of frightened residents broke a relative calm in Urumqi still tense from more than a week of ethnic violence that has left more than 180 people dead.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

URUMQI, China (AP) — Frightened Urumqi residents watched Monday as police in bulletproof vests carrying pistols, shotguns and batons chased down a man and kicked and beat him, shattering a relative calm in the tense city in western China.

Gunfire was heard before and during the brief incident in Urumqi — where recent ethnic unrest left 184 dead — near one of the city's main Uighur neighborhoods. Some bystanders threw themselves to the ground and others fled.

One policeman was seen raising his rifle to strike the man. Beaten, the man in a blue shirt with blood on his right leg lay on the ground. Police formed a ring around him, pointing their guns up at surrounding buildings as if worried about retaliation.

Hong Kong's radio RTHK reported on its Web site Monday that at least two police officers were shot and three Uighurs killed near a Uighur neighborhood. It did not give any more details. The Urumqi police telephone line rang busy all Monday.

The incident came as authorities try to impose a sense of normality on Urumqi after the July 5 riots and subsequent unrest that also left 1,680 wounded. The death toll in China's worst ethnic violence in decades could rise as 74 of the more than 900 people still in hospitals have life-threatening wounds, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

People ran into their homes and shops, slamming their doors. An armored personnel carrier and paramilitary police arrived on the scene, and police waved their guns and shouted for people to get off the streets.

Security vehicles previously deployed on People's Square were no longer there Monday but helmeted riot police remained in the area. Small groups of paramilitary police with riot shields stood guard on street corners and helicopters flew over the city.

Most roads leading to the Grand Bazaar market were reopened and in Uighur districts, more shops lifted their shutters, vendors pushed carts full of peaches and watermelon sellers sliced up their wares. Restaurant staff set up tables under trees next to the road.

Xinhua said police manned checkpoints and searched buses for any suspects involved in the violence, and people were ordered to carry identification for police checks when traveling in Urumqi.

It quoted the Urumqi Public Security Bureau as saying anyone without proper identification would be taken away to be interrogated.

"Citizens are strictly banned from holding dangerous articles including batons or knives in urban streets or public venues," the notice said.

The move was to "prevent a tiny number of individual criminals from the riot who were still at large from seeking revenge," it said, according to Xinhua.

The violence began when Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gers) who were protesting the deaths of Uighur factory workers in a brawl in southern China clashed with police in Urumqi. Crowds scattered throughout the city, attacking ethnic Han Chinese and burning cars.

Government officials have yet to make public key details about what happened next, including how much force police used to restore order. In the following days, vigilante mobs of Han Chinese ran through the city with bricks, clubs and cleavers seeking revenge.

Of the dead, the government has said 137 Han Chinese and 46 Uighurs died, with one minority Hui Muslim also killed. Uighurs say they believe many more from their ethnic group died in the government crackdown.

Since last week, tens of thousands of Chinese troops have poured into Urumqi (pronounced uh-ROOM-chee) and other parts of Xinjiang to impose order. A senior Communist Party official vowed to execute those guilty of murder in the rioting.

The Uighurs, who number 9 million in Xinjiang, have complained about an influx of Han Chinese and government restrictions on their Muslim religion. They accuse the Han of discrimination and the Communist Party of trying to erase their language and culture.

Han Chinese, many of whom were encouraged to emigrate here by the government, believe the Uighurs should be grateful for Xinjiang's rapid economic development, which has brought new schools, highways, airports, railways, natural gas fields and oil wells to the sprawling, rugged region.

Uighurs favor independence or greater autonomy for Xinjiang province, which takes up one-sixth of China's land mass and borders eight Central Asian countries. The Han — China's ethnic majority — have lately been flooding into Xinjiang as the region becomes more developed.

US military deaths in Afghanistan region at 657

By The Associated Press

As of Sunday, July 12, 2009, at least 657 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department. The department last updated its figures Friday at 10 a.m. EDT.

Of those, the military reports 489 were killed by hostile action.

Outside the Afghan region, the Defense Department reports 68 more members of the U.S. military died in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Of those, three were the result of hostile action. The military lists these other locations as Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba; Djibouti; Eritrea; Ethiopia; Jordan; Kenya; Kyrgyzstan; Philippines; Seychelles; Sudan; Tajikistan; Turkey; and Yemen.

There were also four CIA officer deaths and one military civilian death.

2 US Marines die in S. Afghanistan bomb blasts

By JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writer

KABUL – A bomb blast killed two U.S. Marines in Afghanistan's dangerous south, where thousands of American troops have deployed in a massive operation to oust Taliban fighters from the country's opium poppy region, officials said Sunday.

Some 4,000 Marines moved into Helmand province this month, the largest Marine operation in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S. invasion. They have met little head-on resistance but remain vulnerable to guerrilla tactics like suicide and roadside bombs.

"These terrorist attacks are hard to prevent, can be carried out by a few individuals, and do not require a military force capable of confronting the Marines," said Arturo Munoz, an expert on the tribal environment in Helmand province with the Washington-based RAND Corp.

"I would expect the Taliban to avoid pitched battles with the Marines in order to avoid a large number of casualties," he said. "This does not mean they will avoid violence."

The two Marines were killed Saturday in Helmand. Military officials did not release any other details nor give a specific location. The military initially reported four Marines had died but later corrected the figure, saying the deaths were mistakenly double-counted.

The American casualties come after eight British deaths in Helmand in a 24-hour period ending Friday, triggering debate in Britain about its role in Afghanistan. Britain has now lost more troops in Afghanistan than in Iraq.

In an interview broadcast Sunday, President Barack Obama called Britain's contribution critically important and said U.S. and British troops face a difficult summer ahead of elections in Afghanistan late next month.

"We've got to get through elections," Obama told Sky News. "The most important thing we can do is to combine our military efforts with effective diplomacy and development, so that Afghans feel a greater stake and have a greater capacity to secure their country."

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan will help keep extremist groups from launching attacks inside Britain. And he told Afghan President Hamid Karzai in a telephone call Sunday that Britain would stand "shoulder-to-shoulder with the people of Afghanistan for the long haul," according to a statement by the Afghan presidency.

The embattled prime minister told his troops in an interview Sunday with the British military radio network that it was proving to be a "difficult summer" in Afghanistan but that operations in Helmand were making "considerable progress" toward defeating the Taliban.

But in an editorial Sunday, The Observer newspaper predicted the British public will soon decide the war is not worth the casualties.

"Lives saved by bringing soldiers home will seem a surer benefit than the unproven hypothesis of preventing terrorism with a war thousands of miles away," the newspaper said.

Another American service member died Friday in the U.S. of wounds suffered in Afghanistan in June, said Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker, who confirmed the deaths of the two Marines.

The three deaths bring to 104 the number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan this year, a record pace. Last year 151 U.S. troops died in the country. Overall, 193 international troops have died in Afghanistan this year, according to an Associated Press count based on official announcements.

Obama ordered 21,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan earlier this year to help put down an increasingly violent Taliban insurgency. Some 10,000 Marines and 4,000 soldiers from the Stryker Brigade — the 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division based in Fort Lewis, Wash. — are deploying in the south, the Taliban's spiritual birthplace and stronghold.

The troops will help provide security for the Aug. 20 election, when Afghans will choose a president and provincial councils, and help train army and police units that the U.S. hopes one day can provide security for the country. By fall, a record 68,000 U.S. troops will be in Afghanistan.

Violence flared elsewhere around the country over the weekend, illustrating again that security is deteriorating. At least 22 people were killed, including seven police officers, officials reported on Sunday.

• In southern Uruzgan province, international troops and Afghan police killed 12 militants in a gunbattle Saturday, police spokesman Mohammad Musa said.

• In Logar, four policemen died when a roadside bomb hit their car in Charkh district Saturday, said provincial police chief Gen. Mustafa Mosseini.

• In Helmand, two police were killed in a roadside bombing in the Helmand provincial capital of Lashkar Gah late Saturday, said Dawood Ahmadi, the governor's spokesman.

• In a gunbattle in eastern Paktia province between insurgents and Afghan police, two militants and one police officer were killed, said Rahullah Samon, a spokesman for the governor.

• In eastern Kunar province, one civilian was killed and five wounded when shells from a gunbattle between insurgents and Afghan and coalition forces hit a house. Provincial Police Chief Gen. Abdul Jalal Jalal said it was unclear which side fired the shots that hit the house.

Uganda: Obama Attacks Tribal Politics

Henry Ochieng & Angelo Izama

12 July 2009

Kampala — President Barack Obama who late on Saturday made a major speech in Accra, Ghana in which he outlined his administration's view of Africa hinted that he will not be tolerating undemocratic behavior, a position that has ramifications for Uganda.

"I do want to make the broader point that a government that is stable, that is not engaging in tribal conflicts, that can give people confidence and security that their work will be rewarded," he told journalists at a news conference on Friday after the G8 summit ahead of his Ghana trip.

This will have sounded like music to President Yoweri Museveni's political opponents and other critics who accuse him of presiding over an ethnicity-based strong-arm government in all its nefarious forms.

Ms Salaamu Musumba, vice president of the opposition Forum for Democratic Change told Sunday Monitor yesterday that Mr Obama "made the right choice in focusing on good governance and not just because it makes for a good buzzword for the media".

"President Obama has understood what the problem is in Africa, he is not imposing his views on us; he has presented a 'stimulus package' to Africa's political leadership and it is up to us to respond. He has made what he stands for clear and done so with humility," she said.

Her optimism were, however, tempered by the cold realization that the continent is led by what she called "tired, haggard old men like [Libya's Mummar] Gadaffi, who unlike Obama, need brutal force to remain in power".

Expounding on President Obama's promise of co-operation in fostering development in Africa, Ms Musumba was again disappointed in noting that the continent has been let down by its leaders who are "allowing us to be re-colonized by the likes of China through the scramble for our resources".

"They are even worse than our grandfathers," she said, "who have had the benefit of hindsight [but are still] making the same mistakes," she said.

President Obama, whose father is from Kenya, had midweek dropped several hints that his speech would be focusing on good governance. He repeated at the news conference that governments that invest in their people succeed "regardless of their history".

President Obama's focus on governance suggests that Washington will have less and not more in common with Uganda during his tenure.

But any tough talk will likely be taken alongside the realities of working in Africa where many of America's allies are countries like Uganda, with political establishments that are largely considered repressive and corrupt -- and yet they still remain of strategic interest to the US either because of the natural resources or geographical location.

Walking the talk deepening democracy and good governance for the Obama administration will therefore have to be taken in light of this reality.

There are also commercial and trade interests to pursue in a continental landscape complicated recently by a new scramble for Africa's vast mineral resources.

Specifically, relations between Kampala (with Uganda having recently discovered considerable deposits of oil) and Washington will still be affected by the view, held at least by the man leading his Africa desk, that Uganda has slipped off the democratic railings and is no longer the potential success story it once was.

Ambassador Johnnie Carson, the new Assistant Secretary of State for Africa has served in Uganda, Kenya and Zimbabwe as US envoy. Today, all three are considered to be at various stages of regression in respect to good governance with Zimbabwe being the extreme.

Mr Carson, now US assistant secretary of state for African affairs, is not well liked. Zimbabwe's Mugabe called him "an idiot" who wanted to dictate what Zimbabwe did [in terms of reforms].

"I hope he was not speaking for Obama" the Zimbabwean strongman was quoted as saying after meeting Carson at the African Union summit in Sirte in Libya this month.

In 2005, three years to Obama's historic election, Carson stirred a storm in Kampala after he wrote a critical article in the Boston Globe newspaper titled "Uganda: A success story past its prime?"

In the article, Mr Carson, while praising President Museveni's achievements in security, the economy and in fighting HIV/Aids, said a new "dark chapter" in Uganda's history would be ushered if Museveni insisted on hanging on to power.

Speaking to an academic audience debating Uganda in Washington, Mr Carson repeated that Uganda's "Uganda's march toward full democracy is on the threshold of becoming unglued".

He also suggested that his continued stay in power was motivated by a desire to protect among others Gen. Salim Saleh, his younger brother from prosecution for corruption.

Sharing the podium with him that day in 2005 was East African scholar, Prof. Joel Barkan and Dr Ruhakana Rugunda, who together with Museveni's political adviser Moses Byaruhanga had flown to Washington to defend the President.

U.S. President Barack Obama (C) and first lady Michelle Obama (R) greet Ghana's President John Atta Mills and his wife Ernestina Naadu Mills (L) upon Obama's arrival in Accra, Ghana on Friday.

"After an extended period of political liberalization... Uganda has slipped back into a period of neo-patrimonial, or 'big man' rule," said Prof. Barkan, a consultant who that year had completed a study for the World Bank which concluded that corruption in Uganda was the oil that fueled politics of "patronage" in the country.

He noted that it was so bad that the Auditor General's reports read like chapters in "Ali Baba and the forty thieves". The Carson attack and ensuing debate which came in the middle of the Ekisanja or 'Third Term' campaign drew a strong reaction from the President's supporters including from his wife, Janet, who controversially said her husband was on a messianic mission to liberate Uganda.

"Museveni does not need a job. It is Uganda that needs liberation" she wrote in response to Mr Carson. Defending the removal of presidential term limits, Dr Rugunda now Uganda's permanent representative at the United Nations, told the audience that was stuffed with US foreign policy types in Washington, that ultimately voters, through elections, were the most effective limit to one man rule.

"There are those who worry that a dictator like Idi Amin might emerge in the absence of term limitations. First of all, dictators do not follow the rule of law and constitutionalism. So, if a dictator were to emerge, no term limitation would stop him," he said.

Yesterday, Mr Byaruhanga described US-Uganda relations as being "good". Asked what he thought of the past criticism of the Museveni regime by Mr Carson, he said the top diplomat had written them in his personal capacity.

"Am not sure those views were those of the US government," Mr Byaruhanga said adding that Uganda's "vision" for good governance and the fight against corruption was in fact more democracy which he expected will go well with the Obama administration.

"Ensuring that an empowered population can periodically through elections throw out the corrupt is the most important thing. [Regular] elections are the institutionalization of the fight against corruption. Other capacities like investigations can then come in," he added.

As Obama made his speech little has changed. President Museveni is widely expected to seek a fourth term in office and corruption and abuse of power most observers note is now so widespread.

But it may not matter whether the US administration consider Uganda's leader, once labeled a 'beacon of hope' a less than appropriate force for good governance since he remains an American ally in the Great Lakes Region which Washington's policy must address broadly.

Uganda is central to the response of the US Africa Command in Somalia and also important to the continued stability of Southern Sudan, which holds a referendum in a year's time where the decision to secede or not from Khartoum will be made and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Even if Obama priorities governance issues, emergencies like the fighting in Somalia, attempts to diffuse the Lord's Resistance Army operating in DRC and ensuring Sudan's neighbors can see it through a referendum on self-rule for the South in 2011 cannot be ignored.

Mr David Mafabi, a political assistant to president, on Friday evening told this paper that he "does not see any particular matter that should cause alarm for the Uganda government with the new US administration".

Emphasizing that he was speaking from a Pan-Africanist perspective and not as the government spokesman, Mr Mafabi said, "we value all our allies and the US is an important player that we have related very well with and will continue but at the end of the day we make our decisions."

President Museveni shot his way to power in 1986 after a five-year guerrilla war against the elected government of Dr Apollo Milton Obote and short-lived military junta of Gen. Tito Okello.

He promised not just a mere change of guards but a fundamental change in the way government would now conduct business the highlight of which was to propel Uganda into a law abiding country with an integrated, self-sustaining economy.

The early Museveni years also saw a lean and frugal approach being brought to public administration which, however, has today given way to a bloated more than 70-member Cabinet with a support cast of hundreds of political appointees both at the centre and local governments whose combined demands are placing the economy under distressing financial strain.

Against that background, Transparency International ranked Uganda as the third most corrupt country in the world in its 'Corruption Barometer' report released two months ago. Meanwhile, critics and diverse civil society organizations have increasingly denounced the suspected widespread use of taxpayer's money to fund partisan political activity geared towards entrenching the current government.

President Museveni also promised political reforms, which reached their highest point with promulgation of a new Constitution in 1995. That Constitution has, however, since been amended so many times with the most prominent change being the deletion of Article 105(2) that previously limited the holding of presidential office by anyone to two terms. Critics say this cleared the way for President Museveni to realize his dream of life presidency - a charge he vigorously denies though.

In the interim, while elections right from the village level have consistently been held since the late 1980s, credible accusations of rigging and other electoral malpractice as confirmed by various court rulings (not least the Supreme Court declarations in 2001 and 2005 following petitions against Museveni's election) have besmirched whatever claims to democratic intent this government has had.

This has been compounded by the harassment, outright disenfranchisement of the opposition at election time and in extreme cases extrajudicial killing of supporters of political opponents by elements of the security services.

The security services, like most other departments of government have increasingly seen their leadership drawn from western Uganda where the President comes from - a state of affairs that critics says cements the fear that Uganda has fallen victim to the divisive tribal politics of the past.

The sum effect of these blotches have cast a pall over President Museveni's legacy that now appears to retain the accolade of his personal dedication to the fight against HIV/Aids as the main positive thing to say about his presidency.

Source: allAfrica.
Link: http://allafrica.com/stories/200907120009.html.

Hamas security detains two Islamic Jihad militants in eastern Gaza

Gaza City - Two militants preparing to fire mortars into Israel were detained Saturday by interior security officials of the Islamic Hamas movement, reported a group to which the militants claim membership. The statement, from the Saraya al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, announced the arrest of their members Saturday, reporting that the two men had been arrested as they engaged an Israeli army force along the border of Israel and the eastern Gaza Strip.

Hamas, which had had de facto control of the Gaza Strip since June 2007, has stopped rocket attacks on Israel, in an unofficial, unannounced and fragile ceasefire with Israel that was reached January 18 at the end of the last Israeli military offensive into Gaza.

Since the end of the Israeli war on Gaza, Hamas has arrested several militants from other factions trying to launch homemade rockets from Gaza at southern Israel.

The group added one of the two men is wanted to Israel and had been previously injured in an Israeli aerial attack on Islamic Jihad militants several months ago. The other is a brother of a suicide bomber who was killed near the Gaza-Israel border in 2004.

Egypt is mediating a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip and working to finalize a prisoners' swap with the Islamic movement in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who has been in captivity in Gaza since June 2006.