Afghan religious leaders on Thursday strongly refuted pro-Taliban remarks by a top Pakistani religious and political leader, classifying them as an “intelligence spin.”

In response to recent remarks by Maulana Fazl-ur-Rahman, leader of Pakistani’s Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F), a conservative religious party accused of maintaining links with various militant groups, the Islamic Scholars Council of Afghanistan called for an Islamic conference to be held in Kabul to debate the religious legitimacy of the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

“Genuine and pious clerics from Pakistan, along with renowned Islamic scholars from the Muslim world, should convene for a religious debate with Afghan religious scholars to assess the situation in Afghanistan, based on the book of Allah [Quran] and teachings of the Prophet [Muhammad],” the Afghan clerics council said.

The statement added that the Pakistani cleric has attempted to legitimize the “inhumane and heinous” actions of militants who have targeted schools, hospitals and mosques throughout the country in their bloody insurgency, killing tens of thousands of innocent Afghan civilians over the last decade.  

U.S., NATO presence cited

The JUI-F leader last week linked the Afghan Taliban’s insurgency to the presence of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, in an effort to justify the Taliban’s continued violence in the country.

Rahman said peace in Afghanistan would not be achieved as long as foreign troops were in the country.

“International forces must withdraw from Afghanistan for stability and peace in the region,” said Rahman, while speaking at a formal gathering where more than a quarter-million people, including foreign guests, celebrated the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the conservative party.

The JUI-F is an offshoot of a Muslim Sunni clerics’ political movement founded in former British India by the Deobandi madrassa, or religious school, in 1919.

Rahman’s father, Mufti Mahmoud, was one of the leading members who parted ways with the movement in 1945 and established what was originally known as JUI after the creation of Pakistan in 1947. The party has been an adamant supporter of the Afghan Taliban, a majority of whom have been educated in hundreds of religious seminaries run by the party across Pakistan.

The Islamic Scholars Council of Afghanistan argues that the JUI-F leader lacks the credentials to issue jihadi verdicts (fatwa) legitimizing the insurgency in Afghanistan.

‘A hostile stance’

“We do not recognize Fazl-ur-Rahman as a religious scholar, but rather he is closely associated with Pakistan’s military establishment,” Mohammad Qasem Haleemi, the spokesman for the Islamic Scholars Council of Afghanistan, told VOA’s Afghan service last week. “It is a hostile stance against Afghanistan.”

Haleemi said that ironically, Fazl-ur-Rahman and his party want peace in Pakistan but instigate people against a legitimate government in Afghanistan.

Last week, the JUI-F secretary general, Abdul Ghafoor Haidari, who was denied a U.S. visa in February, called on the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) to lay down their arms and join his Islamist political party to pursue its objectives through political means.

Analysts charge that several religious groups like JUI-F are actively helping achieve Pakistani military policy goals in the region.

“Pakistan’s security establishment would want to combat India’s influence in Afghanistan through Afghan Taliban. Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman and many other politicians support the security establishment and thus keep a different stance for Afghan and Pakistani Taliban,” said Khadim Hussain, a political and security analyst in Peshawar.

Pakistani officials deny having used these political parties to lure militant groups to violence in places like Afghanistan and India.
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President Donald Trump is sending North Korea a fresh warning, calling it a “problem” country that “will be taken care of.”

Trump commented on North Korea after he was asked about the U.S. military’s decision to drop the largest non-nuclear weapon it has ever used in combat on an area of eastern Afghanistan.

Asked whether dropping the bomb sends a message to North Korea as it continues to pursue nuclear and other weapons, Trump said it makes no difference.

Said Trump: “North Korea is a problem, the problem will be taken care of.”

Trump wants China to help contain North Korea, but in recent weeks he has signaled a willingness to handle the issue alone.

Trump and China’s president discussed North Korea at a meeting last week in Florida.
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An angry mob killed a fellow student at a Pakistani university campus Thursday on accusations that he’d posted blasphemous content online. It was the latest in a series of vigilante attacks over the increasingly contentious issue in the predominantly Muslim country.

Witnesses and local media reported angry students associated with the ruling right-wing political parties in Pakhtunkhwa province used sticks and broken glasses during the attack on Mashal Khan, a journalism student at Abdul Wali Khan University in Mardan.  

“The mob later fired at the tortured body of Mashal Khan and attempted to set the dead body on fire” before police stopped them, a witness said, requesting anonymity.

The crowd marched almost casually to the scene and was so large — estimates put it at about 1,000 — that police said they were unable to intervene to save Khan. Police later arrested about 15 people, and the university was closed down as they sought other suspects.

Blasphemy may be punished by death in Pakistan. While no one has been executed, reports suggest about 17 individuals are facing death sentences, while 19 others face life imprisonment.

Travel advisory

The U.S. State Department mentioned the issue in its latest travel advisory for Pakistan on Wednesday. “Sectarian violence remains a serious threat throughout Pakistan, and the government of Pakistan continues to enforce blasphemy laws,” the advisory said. “Religious minority communities have been victims of targeted killings and accusations of blasphemy.”

In one high-profile case in January 2011, a police guard killed the governor of Punjab province, Salman Taseer, who had advocated reforms in what he called the country’s “ill-conceived” blasphemy laws and had pleaded the case for a Christian mother facing the death penalty on blasphemy charges.

Pakistan’s nongovernmental human rights organization says about 60 people accused of blasphemy have been killed in “mob justice.” Most of the victims have been Muslims, along with members of minority faiths such as Christians and Ahmadis.

In some cases, Muslims have used blasphemy charges against non-Muslim neighbors for personal benefit. A Muslim kiln owner, for example, raised allegations against a Christian couple in Punjab province in November 2014 after a salary dispute. An angry mob broke their legs and threw them into the kiln where they had worked.

As many as 30 Muslim countries have blasphemy laws, and there are a variety of possible punishments for violations.

No provision for mob justice

Qibla Ayaz, an Islamic scholar and former vice chancellor of Peshawar University, told VOA’s Deewa service in a reference to the student’s death that sharia, or Islamic law, doesn’t allow mob justice.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom is critical of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, saying there is no clear definition that empowers accusers to decide whether a violation has occurred.

Pakistan has recently also moved to crack down on dissident voices on social media, in particular Facebook. Additionally, several bloggers vanished for a while this year amid widespread speculation they were kidnapped by government intelligence agencies.
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Philippines’ President Rodrigo Duterte has cancelled a planned visit to an island the Philippines claims in the disputed South China Sea, after Beijing warned him against the visit.

The brash Philippine leader last week announced his plan to raise the Philippine flag in the island of Thitu and fortify it with barracks, setting off alarm bells.

“Because of our friendship with China and because we value your friendship I will not go there to raise the Philippine flag,” Duterte said in a speech before the Filipino community in Riyadh late Wednesday.

“They said, do not go there in the meantime, just do not go there please. I will correct myself because we value our friendship with China,” he said, adding that he might just send his son to the island.

China claims most of the South China Sea through which about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes annually. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims.

Duterte said Beijing warned him that “there will likely be trouble” if every head of state of contending parties will go to the disputed islands and plant flags.

The popular president is on a week-long state visit in the Middle East to facilitate trade and investments, and meet with Filipinos overseas. The Middle East is the second largest source of remittances, with more than one million Filipino workers sending home $7.6 billion in last year, government data showed.

Duterte, who led the warming of ties with China, had blamed the United States for the current maritime tensions for not intervening to stop China building and arming artificial islands in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

The Philippines will reinforce, but not military, areas in the South China Sea controlled by Manila to maintain the geopolitical balance, Duterte said on Monday.
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North Korea appears to have a placed a device in a tunnel at its nuclear test site that could be detonated Saturday or even sooner, U.S. government and other sources said Wednesday.

“We have no comment but we will be watching closely,” an official at the National Security Council told VOA.

North Korea on Saturday will observe the “Day of the Sun,” marking the 105th birth anniversary of its founder, Kim Il Sung.

Commercial satellite imagery of the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site from Wednesday showed continued activity around the north portal, new activity in the main administrative area and a few personnel around the command center, according to the 38 North website, which is run by the U.S.-Korea Institute of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

The nuclear test facility is “primed and ready” for what would be North Korea’s sixth nuclear test, according to an analysis by Joseph Bermudez Jr. and Jack Liu.

South Korea has no indications a military provocation by the North is imminent, Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman Roh Jae-chun told reporters in Seoul on Thursday morning.

Conversation with Xi

U.S. President Donald Trump, at a news conference Wednesday with visiting NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, said he had spoken with China President Xi Jinping the previous evening and “I think he wants to help us with North Korea.” If that does not occur, “we’re just going to go it alone.”

Xi told Trump that China believes the issue of North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear weapons development should be resolved through peaceful means, according to Chinese media reports.

A U.S. naval strike group, led by the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier, following a regularly scheduled assignment in Singapore, was ordered to head north “as a prudent measure” instead of heading toward Australia, as had been planned.

Officials of the Pacific Command told VOA the new position of the vessels off the Korean Peninsula would come at a time when the “number one threat in the region continues to be North Korea, due to its reckless, irresponsible and destabilizing programs of missile tests and pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability.”

The carrier strike group, according to sources, includes the USS Ohio submarine, armed with 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles.  

‘An armada’

“We are sending an armada. Very powerful,” Trump told the Fox Business Network on Tuesday. “We have submarines. Very powerful. Far more powerful than the aircraft carrier.”

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Trump, speaking about North Korea, said “you cannot allow a country like that to have nuclear power, nuclear weapons. That’s mass destruction.”

The president added that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the grandson of Kim Il Sung, “doesn’t have the delivery systems yet, but he will. In many ways, that’s the easiest thing.”

There is also speculation that North Korea could imminently test-fire another intermediate- or long-range ballistic missile, tied to the upcoming holiday.

In April 2012, North Korea tried to launch a long-range rocket ahead of Kim Il Sung’s 100th birth anniversary.

That launch failed.
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Greg Barron, an award-winning radio producer, was 32 when he reported the despair of Cambodian refugees fleeing across the Thai border to escape the Khmer Rouge genocide in late 1979.

Barron knew he did not completely understand what had happened to the refugees. Last year, in Minnesota, he connected with three Cambodians like those whose stories he started to tell nearly 40 years ago.

“I started to realize I never told the full story in that original report. … Back in 1979, very few people knew the facts of the terror, fear and starvation, and the oppression that Khmer people had lived through,” Barron told VOA Khmer.

At least 1.7 million Cambodians were killed by the Khmer Rouge or starved to death from mid-1975 to early 1979.

When the Vietnamese invasion toppled the Khmer Rouge, thousands of Cambodians fled across the Thai border, their first step in seeking refuge in places like the United States.

Bodies hauled away

In November 1979, Barron accompanied American medical teams to Sa Keo and other refugee camps in Thailand and Cambodia. For more than two weeks, he reported on Cambodians who had survived.

Crippling lung disease sickened many. Weak mothers could not feed their babies. Hunger and disease took the lives of many infants and young children.

It was particularly shocking, Barron said, to see trucks come daily “to haul away the dead bodies of [Cambodians] who had made it there but didn’t survive. There were children who were nothing but skeletons, barely breathing.”

At that time, Barron was reporting for Minnesota Public Radio. Upon his return to Minneapolis, he produced a radio documentary about the Cambodian refugees’ story called “Trampled Grass.”

“We had, the reporters, genuine sympathy and sorrow for what we had seen,” he said. “But we weren’t affected in the same way as the refugees were affected. It was easy to move on.”

‘Follow the Moon’

Almost 40 years later, something magical happened, said Barron, now 70 and a retired public radio producer, a Peabody Award winner and a pioneering proponent of in-depth radio storytelling in the United States.

A Cambodian museum opened across the Mississippi River in St. Paul. There, Barron met three Cambodian refugees, and the four determined they had been in the same camps at the same time.

“It occurred to me that my story then in 1979 didn’t even know the ending. … I didn’t know what had driven the people across the border to freedom,” said Barron. “I wanted to tell that story. I needed to finish the story I had started nearly 40 years ago.”

Pichsanthor Kim, Hoeun Hach and Sokurt Sous agreed.

Barron produced “Follow the Moon,” a radio documentary. The title refers to how Cambodians followed the moon west to border camps, where hope of survival and freedom emerged, he said.

The 56-minute documentary will debut on Minnesota Public Radio and American Public Media on April 17, 42 years after the Khmer Rouge assumed power.

“The young Americans know nothing about the disaster and the horror that the Khmer people faced. There are so many similar circumstances in the world today. People need to know how this kind of thing happened.” said Barron.

‘This horrible history’

For the survivors, digging into their memories carried the possibility of renewing traumas they hoped time might have quelled. But they said they were willing to speak with Barron because they did not want history to repeat itself — anywhere.

“It is difficult to recall this painful past,” said Kim, 61. “But I realized I am getting old and that younger generations need to know our stories and this horrible history.”

Kim was 19 when the Khmer Rouge assumed power. They killed her mother and her oldest sister. Kim remains “grateful” to the United States for admitting her and her surviving family, whom she has cared for since their arrival in July 1980.

Khmer Rouge soldiers keep chasing Hach in his dreams, a vivid memory even though he couldn’t recall how his 12-year-old self was separated from his family. “But after talking to Greg, I felt somehow relieved, knowing that this would help other nations to learn about the genocide in Cambodia, and prevent such tragedy,” said Hach, 55, who works for a health care organization.

The only person in his family to come to the United States, he has since reunited with his four sisters in Cambodia, who told him the Khmer Rouge killed their parents.

“Talking to Greg allowed me to recall the painful memory,” said Sous, 58, who lost his father and his brother, the oldest of his seven siblings, to the Khmer Rouge. “I had tried to forget, but in fact, history matters. Because it helped me realize the light of hope and humanity, despite horrible things that happened in Cambodia.”

As more survivors tell their stories, Barron hopes “the community can start to heal again.” For him, making the radio documentary made him more “whole,” Barron said.
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A Pakistani national has pleaded guilty to helping smuggle dozens of people from Pakistan and Afghanistan into the United States.

Sharafat Ali Khan, 32, who U.S. officials say also is a legal resident of Brazil, pleaded guilty Wednesday in a Washington courtroom.

Prosecutors say Khan was part of a human smuggling ring that brought an unspecified number of people north by plane, bus and on foot through the Colombian jungle. Court records show the travelers paid between $5,000 and $12,000 each before their journeys.

“The average traveler took approximately nine months to get from Brazil all the way to the United States. During the voyage from Brazil through South and Central America, aliens were subjected to harsh conditions that caused a substantial risk of serious bodily injury or death,” court records stated.

Khan is set to be sentenced in July.
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