Here are some recent editorials I wrote for The Gulf Today. (Posted
for my records):
**
Road
safety every
driver’s
responsibility
Caution
is a key word in every motorist’s dictionary. Motorists should observe safe
driving rules especially during challenging weather conditions, like foggy
days. As they say, “Your destination is reward for safe driving.”
Almost a
fortnight ago, Metha Bin Udai, CEO of RTA’s Traffic and Roads Agency, called on
motorists to exercise every caution during the days and weeks ahead, which had
the potential of thick fog blankets and possibly rainfall.
Such
occasions are always associated with escalating traffic accidents due to wet
roads.
While
most motorists do comply with such valuable suggestions, it is sad that there
are a few who throw caution to the winds while driving, putting not only their
own lives in risk, but also of others on the road.
Dubai
Police reported 144 traffic accidents due to the thick fog that blanketed the
Emirate on Thursday morning. The Command and Control Centre of Dubai Police
also received 1,257 calls on that single day.
Major
Mohammed Juma Aman, Acting Director of the centre, has rightly urged motorists
to be vigilant when driving during such weather conditions and fog.
As he
suggests, motorists should always use signals while shifting lanes, besides
using fog lights.
Motorists
should check weather conditions on various media platforms. Employees would do
well to start their journey to work well ahead of time in order to avoid
accidents during foggy conditions.
Every
motorist should heed RTA officials’ suggestions including that drivers
continually check their vehicles and maintain them properly especially
headlights, wipers, tyres and brakes as they contribute to boosting driver’s
visibility and control of the vehicle during rainy spells.
Motorists
should also reduce speed, maintain sufficient distance between vehicles and
anticipate the stoppage of traffic at any moment.
Speaking
on the mobile phone while driving is a very dangerous habit that should be
avoided at any cost.
Among the
other helpful tips from the RTA officials are that the drivers should not use
full beam, and stop vehicles on or near the driving lane to avoid causing
serial accidents with vehicles coming from behind.
They
should also avoid sudden burst of speed.
Low
horizontal visibility caused by fog in various coastal and inland areas of the
country could prove dangerous if motorists do not take adequate care.
The UAE
is driving ahead on all fronts. Motorists should add another glory to the
nation by strictly following the rules and making the roads safest in the world.
**
Heinous,
cowardly
attack in
Kandahar
The
terrorist attack that resulted in the wounding of the UAE Ambassador to
Afghanistan, Juma Mohammed Abdullah Al Ka'abi, and the death of a number of
Emiratis who were on a noble mission in the city of Kandahar is a brutal,
cowardly and heinous act carried out by enemies of humanity.
The UAE
martyrs — Mohammed Ali Zainal Al Bastaki, Abdullah Mohammed Essa Obaid Al
Kaabi, Ahmed Rashid Salim Ali Al Mazroui, Ahmed Abdul Rahman Ahmad Al Tunaiji,
and Abdul Hamid Sultan Abdullah Ibrahim Al Hammadi — were actually on a mission
to carry out humanitarian, educational and development projects in the Republic
of Afghanistan.
They were
there as part of the UAE programme to provide help and support to the brotherly
people of Afghanistan.
The UAE
envoy’s visit also included a plan to lay the foundation stone for the Khalifa
Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Institute for technical education in Kabul, to be funded by
Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Foundation.
As
pointed out by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice
President, Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, the perpetrators of
this heinous terrorist act do not know the meaning of humanity and its noble
values.
Sheikh
Mohammed has rightly and forcefully affirmed that the UAE will continue to
provide humanitarian and development assistance to affected communities and
support people in need regardless of challenges.
It should
not be forgotten that over the last five years, the UAE had contributed over
$400 million in security, economic, humanitarian and development assistance to
Afghanistan.
The Abu
Dhabi Fund for Development provided $149.6 million for implementing a 4,000
unit social housing project in Kabul. Dubai Cares pledged $ 1.3 million for
primary education, pre-schooling development programmes and eradication of
illiteracy in Afghanistan.
The UAE’s
humanitarian aid programmes are intended to help the poor and those in need
around the world and such mindless violence will not steer the country away
from its acts of benevolence for which it is admired by the entire world.
Indiscriminate
attacks against civilians and diplomatic envoys are deemed violations of human
rights and international humanitarian law.
International
efforts should be intensified to combat terrorism.
Only
venomous minds filled with malevolence towards righteous human values can
contemplate or carry out such attacks.
The
perpetrators of the cruel act should be swiftly brought to book.
**
The
never-ending
woes of
migrants
The woes
of migrants who risk their lives to reach what they presume are safer places
never seem to end. Harsh winter and xenophobic attitudes in some of the
countries where they seek shelter compound their problems.
The
International Organisation for Migration has reported that 358,403 migrants and
refugees entered Europe by sea in 2016 through Dec.21, arriving mostly in
Greece and Italy.
"Deaths
in the Mediterranean this year reached 4,913," according to the organisation’s
Missing Migrants Project, with 13 new fatalities reported since its last report
on Dec.20.
Sadly,
the 4,913 deaths in the Mediterranean through Dec.21 indicate a 2016 average
daily death toll of nearly 14 men, women and children per day.
On another
front, according to the UN refugee agency,
Serbia's centres for housing migrants are completely full, leaving more than a
1,000 facing a winter sleeping rough in the Balkan country that has become a
bottleneck as the European Union sealed its borders.
At least 7,000 migrants mainly from Afghanistan,
Iraq and Syria are said to be trapped in Serbia, many spending months in a
country culturally and financially ill-equipped to care for them and where few
of them want to stay.
Aid agencies estimate more than 100 new migrants
are entering Serbia every day, while only around 20 are allowed to enter
Hungary — Serbia's only neighbour in Europe's Schengen visa-free area.
Shockingly,
about half of those are children, and every
10th child is classified as unaccompanied, according to Save the Children
officials.
As former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently
underscored,
every migrant is a human being with human rights and to protect those rights
stronger international cooperation is needed among countries of origin, transit
and destination that is guided by international law and standards.
A record 65.3 million people were uprooted
worldwide last year, with Syria and Africa responsible for a large part of a 50
per cent surge in just five years, the United Nations refugee agency mentioned
in a report in June.
That means 1 in every 113 people on the planet is
now a refugee, asylum-seeker or internally displaced person.
As the
New Year begins, one only hopes that policies driven by xenophobic rhetoric and
the scapegoating of migrants end. The fact remains that migration is
inevitable.
Compassion
is the key word when it comes to handling migrants. The only way forward is
initiating effective steps to better integrate migrants in the societies.
The
plight of the Muslim Rohingya minority has
been turning from bad to worse and it is disheartening that the world community
is yet to initiate any concrete measures that could make the Myanmar government
see reason.
**
End
repression
of the
Rohingya
Human rights group Amnesty International has
rightly warned that the actions of Myanmar's military may constitute crimes
against humanity based on accounts of violence against the helpless Rohingya.
According to Amnesty, in one incident on Nov.12,
following an alleged skirmish between the army and villagers armed mostly with
simple weapons, helicopter gunships descended on a village and sprayed bullets
indiscriminately, killing civilians fleeing in a panic.
Satellite images Amnesty obtained showed 1,200
burned structures, which was is in line with images released by Human Rights
Watch in November that showed 1,500 burned homes.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak had also
recently accused de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi of allowing genocide on her
watch.
On Monday, Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman
highlighted reports from many sources alleging arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial
killings including of children, rape by soldiers, burning of Rohingya villages
as well as destruction of homes and places of worship.
Myanmar, which has vehemently denied the
allegations of abuse, has responded by angrily summoning Malaysia's ambassador
and banning its workers from going to the country.
Myanmar's army went on a counterinsurgency
offensive in the Rakhine state after an October attack there on police outposts
that killed nine officers.
Rakhine, located in Myanmar's west, has long been
home to simmering tensions between the Rohingya and the country's Buddhist
majority population.
The last major outbreak of violence in 2012 left
hundreds dead and drove 140,000 people into internal displacement camps.
Just last
week, UN rights commissioner Zeid Ra'ad Al
Hussein criticised the Myanmar government's callous handling of the crisis,
describing it as "a lesson in how to make a bad situation worse.”
He made
it clear that the repeated dismissal of the claims of serious human rights
violations as fabrications, coupled with the failure to allow our independent
monitors access to the worst affected areas in northern Rakhine, was highly
insulting to the victims and an abdication of the government's obligations
under international human rights law.
Myanmar's more than one million Rohingya are among
the most persecuted people in the world and deserve international support.
The crisis has affected the entire region. There is
a need to make the Myanmar military accountable for its actions against the
vulnerable Rohingya.
