Australia asylum shipwreck 'drowns dozens

 Dozens of people are feared to have drowned after a boat carrying suspected asylum seekers crashed into rocks on Australia's Christmas Island.

Pictures from the scene showed the boat, believed to be carrying Iranians and Iraqis, smashed to pieces.

Witnesses said they could do little to help as the seas were too rough to approach the vessel.

The boat appeared to be trying to land at Christmas Island, where Australia has an immigration detention centre.
'Engine failed'

The BBC's Nick Bryant, in Sydney, says he understands that about 70 people were on the vessel and about 40 were rescued.
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Analysis
Nick Bryant BBC News, Sydney

Most asylum seekers travel with the help of people-smugglers in Indonesia and are generally intercepted by the Australian Navy well before they reach Christmas Island. One of the curious things about this episode is that the boat managed to get so far without being intercepted. Another boat was intercepted just a couple of days ago and the navy vessel that is bringing those suspected asylum seekers to shore has been unable to come into harbour because the weather conditions are so foul.

Christmas Island is Australia's offshore detention centre, currently housing more than 2,000 people. It is absolutely at breaking point. The government has had to open up detention facilities on the mainland, which it has always tried to avoid. It is a very politically sensitive issue. It was a big issue in the election here a couple of months ago - the opposition parties saying the government had been too soft on asylum seekers, who were encouraged to try to reach Australian shores.

Acting Prime Minister Wayne Swan, standing in for Julia Gillard while she is on holiday, confirmed that some people had died but could not say how many.

"A number of people have been rescued, but sadly some bodies have been retrieved."

A spokeswoman for the Royal Flying Doctor Service said 30 people were being treated for injuries and three of them were critically ill.

Residents of Christmas Island said they were alerted to the disaster by the sounds of screaming from the shore.

"We threw ropes over the cliffs and we must have thrown in a couple of hundred life-jackets," one resident was quoted as saying by the West Australian newspaper website.

"About 15 or 20 people managed to get into the jackets but there are bodies all over the water," he said.

"There are dead babies, dead women and dead children in the water. The swell is unbelievably big."

Another resident, Simon Prince, told Associated Press: "The engine had failed. They were washing backward and forward very close to the cliffs here, which are jagged limestone cliffs, very nasty.

"When the boat hit the cliff there was a sickening crack. All the people on board rushed to the land side, which is the worst thing they could do."

Australian media said residents alerted the police at 0545 (2045 GMT on Tuesday).

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Acting PM Wayne Swan: "Sadly some bodies have been retrieved"

Australia Customs launched two inflatable boats to rescue survivors.<<more>>

One witness, documentary maker Philip Stewart, said he arrived at the shore about an hour after the boat first hit the rocks and it was already in pieces.

He said he saw about seven survivors but conditions were too rough for rescuers to get close enough to help.

"They were waving and shouting and screaming for help," he told Australia's ABC News.

"They were desperate, by that stage they had been in the water for an hour already.

"They hung on for as long as they possibly could and each one of them was eventually thrown off into the sea on to the rocks."

He said he saw one person picked up while the others drowned.

Australia has seen an increase this year in asylum seekers arriving by boat.

There are currently almost 3,000 people in the Christmas Island processing centre waiting for officials to rule on their cases.

The island is in the Indian Ocean, about 1,200km (750 miles) north-west of the Australian mainland and about 300km south of Indonesia.

Slack govt ‘dragging feet’ on treaty implementation

KATHMANDU, DEC 12 -
Human Rights National Magna Meet, a three-day rights fiesta, concluded in the Capital on Saturday with a decision to pressure the government to implement all international treaties on human rights protection it has signed.
According to a declaration paper released on Saturday, Nepal has so far signed 28 international treaties, including six treaties of the United Nations (UN). Although Nepal has adopted the highest number of human rights treaties in South Asia, non-implementation of these instruments has promoted a culture of impunity. So, the declaration urges the government to enforce these treaties as soon as possible and adopt other international treaties related to enforced disappearances and caste-based discriminations, among others.
The paper also demands immediate adoption and implementation of International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute.
Speaking at a programme in the Capital on Saturday, women rights activist Ranju Thakur said the state of impunity has created an environment of fear among the people. “Despite much talk on human rights, cases of human rights violations have gone up. No effective step has been taken so far to protect human rights and end impunity.”
The declaration paper, submitted by the Magna Meet Coordinator Ganesh BK to Minister for Peace and Reconstruction Rakam Chemjong, also urges the political parties to be sincere towards peace process and institutionalise peace and human rights in the country. The paper demands drafting of the statute on time incorporating voices from all the marginalized sections.
Addressing the meet’s concluding ceremony, Chemjong admitted that rising cases of impunity have posed a threat to peace process.
“It’s true that lack of consensus among the parties has pushed the peace and constitution-drafting processes towards danger,” he said.
Rights activists from all 75 districts had participated in Saturday’s function. Demanding immediate implementation of over 380 recommendations made by National Human Rights Commission to the government, the Mechi-Mahakali (East-West) Human Rights Caravan arrived here on Friday. The caravan started on Thursday from Biratnagar in the East and Dhangadi in the West.

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Kosovo holds historic election as division persists

Kosovo is holding its first parliamentary election since unilaterally declaring independence from Serbia almost three years ago.

The ethnic Albanian majority and small Serb minority remain largely estranged, more than a decade after a Nato-led conflict broke Belgrade's control.

Serbia has not recognised Kosovo's independence and most Serbs are expected to boycott the elections.

The EU says the election is important for Kosovo's hopes of entry.

During the campaign, institutionalised corruption and the dire state of Kosovo's economy have consistently topped lists of voter concerns.

Opinion polls have suggested that the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) of the outgoing Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci, is in the lead but is unlikely to win an outright majority.

Its former junior coalition partner, the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), is mounting a strong challenge.

Polls are due to close at 1900 (1700 GMT) on Sunday.

'Partition fears' An early election had to be called after the LDK pulled out of Mr Thaci's government in October in a row over its then leader, Fatmir Sejdiu, who was also Kosovo's president.

After Mr Sejdiu stepped down as president, he was ousted from the LDK leadership by the mayor of Pristina, Isa Mustafa.

Another party, the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, has been weakened because its leader, former rebel Ramush Haradinaj, is being retried by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

Among Kosovo's most daunting challenges are an unemployment rate of 45% - even higher among young people - and one of the weakest economies in Europe.

While recognised by many Western countries, Kosovo is still not a member of the UN and its ethnic Albanian majority are under pressure to show they can build peaceful relations with the Serb minority.

Serbs now only number around 120,000 out of Kosovo's population of two million.

The vast majority of Serbs continue to live in enclaves guarded by Nato-led peacekeepers, and many are concentrated in the north, between the divided town of Mitrovica and the Serbian border.

Posters in Mitrovica have been calling on Serbs to boycott the election. "No to elections in the false state of Kosovo," reads one.

The US ambassador in Kosovo, Christopher Dell, has warned that an attempt to partition the north could spark renewed ethnic violence across the region, according to a series of secret diplomatic cables released by the Wikileaks website on Thursday.

"Failure to act soon means losing northern Kosovo and will re-open the Pandora's Box of ethnic conflict that defined the 1990s," Mr Dell said.