16 theSun | MONDAY NOVEMBER 10 2008

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EARTHREPORT
Emotions run high as Bali Week Ending November 7

Drought ghost towns

THE United Nations’ environment chief

bombers buried
TENGGULUN, (Indonesia): Grief and
religious fervour boiled over into calls for
revenge here yesterday as two brothers
executed for their role in the 2002 Bali attacks
were prepared for burial amid tight security.
A crowd of about 500 supporters drove
police off the road leading to the family home
of 47-year-old Amrozi – dubbed the “smiling
assassin” for his disturbing grin – and
Mukhlas, 48, as their bodies arrived.
The men had been executed by firing
squad along with fellow bomber Imam
Samudra shortly after midnight on a prison
island off southern Java, claiming to want
to die as “martyrs” and having shown no
remorse for the attacks.
The crowd burst into tears and shouts of
“Allahu Akbar!” (God is great) at the sight of
two black crows over the east Java village as
the helicopter bearing the bodies landed in a
nearby field.
“God is great, God is great! God is showing
his greatness. I’m so happy,” shouted a
supporter who sobbed uncontrollably at the
sight of the birds.
“This is God’s grace. The mujahedeen
(holy warriors) will fight on!” shouted
someone else in the crowd, crying and
holding his hands to the sky in religious awe.
“Of course they are martyrs. They fought
hard in the name of Islam but they died. But
dying doesn’t mean they lost – they still won,”
said one supporter, refusing to give his name.
Packed into narrow streets outside the
family home, the crowd thronged around
ambulances bearing the bodies from the
helicopter and jostled with heavily armed
paramilitary police.
The bodies were eventually delivered to
the local mosque for prayers ahead of the
burials.
In the west Java town of Serang, Imam
Samudra was buried quickly after similar
On a
high
& low
REUTERSPIX
pg 22
The body
of Bali
bomber is
carried into
a mosque
for prayers
before his
burial in
Serang,
Bantan
province
yesterday.
scenes as his body was paraded through the
streets shrouded in a black cloth bearing a
Koranic inscription in Arabic.
Members of a radical group headed by
hardline cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who was
jailed on a conspiracy charge related to the
bombings before being released in 2006,
pushed people aside to make way for the
body.
“There’ll probably be retaliation. What is
clear is that no drop of Muslim blood is free.
It has consequences,” said Ganna, 26, who
travelled 90km from the capital Jakarta to
show his support.
The bombers said they launched the
attacks against packed nightclubs on the
resort island of Bali – killing 202 people,
mostly foreign tourists – to defend Islam from
Western aggression and avenge US action in
Afghanistan and Iraq.
They were members of the Jemaah
Islamiyah regional terror group blamed for
a series of attacks around the region, part of
a “holy war” to create an Islamic caliphate
spanning much of Southeast Asia.
Most Indonesians practise a moderate
form of Islam, and head of the country’s
leading Islamic body, the Indonesian Council
of Ulamas, said yesterday the bombers could
not be considered “martyrs”.
“Someone who killed others will not die
as martyrs unless they waged a war in the
name of religion. They were not fighting for
religion,” Umar Shihab was quoted as saying
by the Detikcom news website. – AFP
warned that some parts of the world
may have to be abandoned because
climate change and overuse of water
resources will leave them far too dry to
be inhabited. Achim Steiner, executive
director of the UN Environment Pro-
gram, said “economic deserts,” unfit
for people or agriculture, could develop
in the poorest nations in the world as
well as some of the most prosperous.
Steinerwarns fighting global warming
and poverty could prevent the creation
of untold numbers of climate refugees.
Roadway prisons
A NEW study says that forest
elephants in Central Africa are
under siege from road construction,
which has frightened them from
roaming the woods that have been
their home for thousands of years.
Researchers from the Wildlife Con-
servation Society say the elephants
have learned to associate roads
with poaching and other dangers,
and now avoid crossing them at all
costs. Only one of 28 pachyderms
tagged with a GPS collar crossed a
road outside a protected area.
Ethiopian eruption
A VOLCANO in Ethiopia’s northeastern
Afar region was awakened by a swarm
of tremors, then soon produced a lava
flow that covered a record 115 square
miles. Addis Ababa University’s Institute
of Geophysics, Space Sciences and
Astronomy said the eruption occurred
at Erta Ale, which is the country’s only
known active volcano. It is located in the
Danakil Depression, one of the lowest
and hottest places on the planet.
Tropical cyclones
TROPICAL Storm Polo formed briefly
off Mexico’s Pacific coast. Maximum
sustained winds briefly reached only
64kph. Tropical storm Paloma formed
off the Caribbean coast of Honduras,
and threatened to strike Cuba as a
Category 2 storm the following week.
Earthquakes
PARTS of the Dallas-Fort Worth met-
ropolitan area were gently shaken by
an unprecedented series of 10 minor
tremors over a two-day period. There
are no significant faults or seismic fea-
tures that could produce a major quake
in northern Texas, and the US Geological
Survey believes the swarm could have
been due to temperature changes or
the “settling” of the ground. – Universal
Press Syndicate

Thai press speculates on new

home for Thaksin
BANGKOK: Britain’s decision to
revoke the visas of ousted Thai
premier Thaksin Shinawatra and
his wife provoked speculation
in local press yesterday over
where the self-exiled leader
might set up home next.
Thailand’s foreign ministry
on Saturday confirmed that Brit-
ain had slapped an entry ban on
Thaksin and his wife Pojaman.
It comes after Thaksin was
last month sentenced in absen-
tia to two years in jail for conflict
of interest after helping his wife
buy state-owned land when he
was prime minister.
The reasons for the British
government’s decision remain
unclear, but there appear to be
a number of countries willing
to take in the multi-millionaire,
who was overthrown in a coup
in September 2006.
“We don’t have to be
concerned about Thaksin and
his family,” the Thai-language
Matichon newspaper quoted
Pracha Prosobdee, a member
of the ruling pro-Thaksin People
Power Party (PPP), as saying.
“There are the Bahamas and
several countries in Africa and
around the world that will gladly
welcome high-quality people
like him.”
The Nation newspaper
quoted an unnamed source
from the PPP saying Thaksin
was building a 300-million-baht
(RM1 billion) mansion in China,
where he and his wife might
take up residence if Britain is
indeed off the cards.
The English-language paper
also mentioned the Bahamas,
and said the pair had been
offered honorary citizenship
there.
The Bangkok Post’s Sunday
edition quoted a source as say-
ing that the couple were cur-
rently in China. Last week, the
paper reported that Bolivia was
considering offering Thaksin a
post as an economic adviser.
Thailand’s Prime Minister
Somchai Wongsawat – Thak-
sin’s brother-in-law – remained
tight-lipped about his relative’s
plans.
“The revoking of the visas is
the decision by the government
of Great Britain – we cannot
criticise,” he told reporters,
but refused to say whether
he planned to meet up with
Thaksin on his trip today to the
Philippines. – AFP