UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Tuesday, February 14, 1995
7A
Gunmen take over Pakistan's capital
The Associated Press
KARACHI, Pakistan—The gunmen of Karachi usually strike at night.
Sometimes it is a sniper who fires from a rooftop at pedestrians. Often it is a man on a motorcycle who blasts away on a busy street and then speeds off into the darkness. Lately, the attackers have grown so bold as to enter mosques and fire on men kneeling in prayer.
Political, religious and ethnic feuds all have been factors in the almost daily shootings that have left more than 1,000 people dead over the past year in Karachi, a massive port city of at least 10 million people.
The local government is too weak and poorly run to pick up garbage or hand out parking tickets, much less catch the well-armed gunmen. Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has pledged to clean up the chaos, but there is a strong sense that Karachi, Pakistan's business capital, has spun out of control.
"People have never felt so unsafe and helpless," said Sarfraz Ahmed, a resident of the Karachi Central district, the area hardest hit by the violence. "We never know when anyone will become the target of a terrorist attack."
Karachi's problems offer an
extreme example of woes that plague the country as a whole; political instability, drug trafficking, plentiful guns and persistent violence.
Bhutto has been only partially successful in reversing the country's image with such acts as last week's arrest and extradition to the United States of Ramzi Yousef, an Iraqi charged with organizing the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York.
Much of the Karachi fighters pits the security forces against supporters of the Mohajir Qaumi Movement, a powerful opposition group that has used violence, strikes and other confrontational tactics to paralyze the city.
The MQM represents the mohajirs, or Muslims who migrated to Pakistan from India when the Asian subcontinent was divided into two nations in 1847.
The mohajars account for a majority of Karachi's population, but said Bhutto and previous leaders have shortchanged them when it comes to jobs, education and political clout. Periodic talks between the government and the MQM have failed to settle the dispute.
The MQM wants local elections, which they would almost certainly win. Bhutto, however, does not want to risk losing political control of the country's largest city, and she has relied on municipal leaders that she appointed.
To further complicate the matter, the MQM has split into two factions that often fight one another when they are not battling the police. And in the past year, militant Sunni and Shite Muslim groups have started attacking one another. Criminal gangs also run rampant.
But many streets are now empty when the sun goes down, and attendance at some mosques has dropped off due to the violence.
The latest killings have come during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when the city normally slows down and men spend hours hanging out and talking with friends.
In one of the worst attacks, gunmen with automatic rifles fired on men attending evening prayers Feb. 5 at the Babul Islam Mosque, leaving nine dead and more than a dozen wounded.
"Several bullets passed over my head. I saw several people in pools of blood," said Sohail Ahmed, 59. "Police arrived when it was all over.
The people were very angry and pelted the police with stones."
There is widespread frustration with both the government and the police. The government has been unable to provide basic services such as water and electricity, which frequently break down.
The police rarely catch killers and seem unable to protect even themselves. More than 100 police have been killed in the city since the beginning of 1994.
"Every third man in Karachi is armed," said Abdul Sattar Sheilh, senior superintendent of police for the Karachi Central district.
"We are not equipped to counter organized terrorism."
The army patrolled the streets for more than two years, but Bhutto withdrew the force at the end of November and said police could maintain order. However, the violence immediately worsened and more than 200 people have been killed in the past two months.
The unrest has scared off potential foreign investors at a time when they are pouring vast sums of money into Asia's fast growing cities.
"We are heading toward a disaster," said Yaqub Karim, a leading industrialist.
Young South African government's troubles continue
The Associated Press
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — An African National Congress official accused of pocketing aid money gave up an ambassadorial appointment yesterday, renewing accountability questions about the 10-month-old ANC government.
Citing a mounting criminal investigation and personal strain, Allan Boesak offered to withdraw as ambassador-designate to the United Nations at Geneva.
President Nelson Mandela said he accepted Boesak's decision with regret. Boesak denied wrongdoing.
"I know I have nothing to fear and I
continue to have confidence in President Mandela's sense of justice and fairness. Boesak said.
The ANC's political rivals want the organization to act strongly against Boesak, who emerged at the center of the scandal last year.
The National Party, one of Mandela's partners in South Africa's coalition government, said in a statement that the handling of the matter had been far from satisfactory.
Foreign donors say more than $570,000 has been misappropriated and vowed to seek criminal charges against Boesak and other officials of his Foundation for Peace and Justice.
headed the World Council of Churches, figured prominently in the anti-apartheid movement, which culminated with ANC victory in the nation's first all-race election last April.
But after scandal and personal problems, including a publicized love affair with the woman who is now his second wife, damaged his public image. Boesak gave up his ministry.
The ANC also faces turnoil from a long-controversial figure — Mandela's estranged wife, Winnie, who has characterized his coalition government as weak.
Winnie Mandela, deputy minister of arts, culture and technology, wrote
But she offered no apology and cast herself as the ANC leadership's link to its grass-roots supporters.
Mandela on Monday, telling him she never intended to embarrass him or his government when she criticized it this month.
Winnie Mandela has support from Blacks who believe the ANC should move faster to improve their lives. But she faces a revolt by members of the ANC Women's League, which she heads. Eleven of the league's 25 top leaders submitted their resignations during the weekend, saying Winnie Mandela was making decisions without consulting them.
Michigan student jailed for Internet sex stories
DETROIT — A college student who wrote on the Internet about torturing, raping and murdering a classmate is "a ticking bomb ready to go off" and will be jailed until trial, a federal magistrate said Friday.
The Associated Press
Jake A. Baker's free-speech rights are not an issue, said Magistrate Thomas A. Carlson, noting that Baker made specific threats against a specific woman and discussed the logistics of the crime.
"Just thinking about it anymore doesn't do the trick. I need to do it," Baker messaged a man with whom he'd been discussing rape, torture and murder, Carlson said.
The mustached and bespectacled University of Michigan student sat expressionless throughout the bail hearing.
Baker, 20, of Boardman, Ohio, doesn't deny writing the messages and stories over the worldwide computer network, but his lawyer Douglas R. Mulkoff said the quotes have been taken out of context.
After all, Mullkoff said, Baker's tale about his classmate began, "The following story contains lots of sick stuff. You have been warned."
One transmission read, "Torture is foreplay, rape is romance, snuff (killing) is climax."
Baker is charged with interstate transmission of a threat, punishable by up to five years in prison. A trial date was not set.
Free speech advocates were divided over Baker's claim that his words are constitutionally protected.
"What he has done is published a short story... the kind that's probably found on the shelves of adult bookstores," said Howard Simon, executive director of the Michigan American Civil Liberties Union. "The stupidity on his part is that he named a real person."
The appropriate remedy is not prosecution but a lawsuit for invasion of privacy, Simon said.
Fink said Baker gave up his free speech protection when he discussed how to commit the crime and named a target.
First Amendment lawyer Herschel
"That moves this into the area of potential criminal conspiracy," Fink said.
Baker sent three narratives last year to a "sex stories" file on the Internet.
A man in Ontario, Canada, responded to Baker about the stories and the two discussed how they could kidnap a woman. The man has not been charged.
One story described how Baker and another man would kidnap the classmate at gunpoint, rape her, force her to strip and torture her with a clamp and a spreader bar before killing her, the FBI said.
Baker apparently never met the woman but had taken a Japanese class with her in the fall. The woman's name was not released.
"Here's a real person who has her name sent throughout the world to every wacko," Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Shoddily said. "God knows who's going to hear this and like it and do something about it."
The FBI began investigating after a Michigan graduate living in Moscow complained to the school. His daughter had come across the story on the Internet, FBI agent Greg Stejskal said.
Two psychiatrists who examined Baker testified at a university hearing Thursday that he showed no evidence of mental illness, his lawyer said. The school suspended Baker Feb. 2. He has appealed.
“It’s pure fantasy,” Vilma Baker said. “He is not dangerous. The judge must have woken up this morning and thought he was a psychiatrist.”
Vilma Baker, a high school English teacher in Ohio, said her son selected the woman's name after hearing it in a class of 200 students.
"Her last name is a sexual pun, and that is why he used her name. Shakespeare would have loved it," she said.
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