On the news today:
Victims of hateBy Teoh El Sen and Aizat Sharif September 23, 2008 Malay Mail
African undergraduate Abdel Aziz Hassan Abdraman, 22, will never again see his eight-month-old daughter and 19-year-old wife because he was the “victim of a hate crime” that claimed his life.
Abdel Aziz had planned to return home to Chad for Aidilfitri this week and his friends said he was overjoyed at going back to be with his family.
Sunday’s mob attack on 10 African undergraduates in Wangsa Maju caused his death and injured the rest, the victims claimed yesterday.
They said they had been harassed and mocked by the same youths for four consecutive days before the attack.
They further claimed that some youths had even gone up to their Tar Villa apartment and demanded money and cigarettes.
Police confirmed that the victims had been regularly ridiculed by the youths who expressed their displeasure at the increasing presence of Africans in the neighbourhood.
In one incident, a student was also kicked at an Internet café.
Residents and traders have claimed that the number of Africans and other foreigners, mainly students from institutions of higher learning, was growing steadily and that their large number was intimidating.
In Sunday’s incident, HELP University College business studies undergraduate Abdel Aziz was murdered. He sustained stab wounds to the right abdomen and died in the ambulance on the way to Kuala Lumpur Hospital.
Several other students, also from Chad, were injured when they were attacked by some 20 youths wielding metal rods, sticks and knives near the Wangsa Maju LRT station.
Sentul district police chief Assistant Commissioner Zakaria Pagan told Malay Mail that initial investigations revealed that the attack stemmed from the uneasiness of the residents over the behaviour of the Africans.
“We believe the youths who attacked the Africans wanted to teach them a lesson to behave themselves in public.”
Police have detained three men, in their 20s, from Wangsa Maju to assist in investigations. They will be under remand until Saturday.
Police are also examining closed-circuit television camera (CCTV) images near the LRT station to ascertain the events leading to the attack.
Malay Mail learnt the drama unfolded when three undergraduates were on the way to board the LRT to perform terawih prayers at a nearby mosque at 8.30pm.
They were confronted by some 20 youths who were believed to have hurled abuse at them and demanded money.
When the trio ignored them and walked away, the youths, carrying switch blades, pursued them and struck one of them on the head.
The students took refuge at the LRT station and sought assistance from their African friends living nearby.
Seven of their friends, including Abdel Aziz, went to their aid and together they went back to where the trio was attacked.
Abdel Aziz’s cousin, Abdraman Moussa Mohamat, 23, said: “We asked the youths who were seated at the stalls why they had attacked our friends but they came for us suddenly without saying a word.
“We ran for our lives when they began swinging metal rods, sticks and knives at us. In the fracas, Abdel Aziz was stabbed from the back.”
The mob fled after Abdel Aziz collapsed by the roadside some 15 metres from the stalls.
Lamine Moustapha Ahmat, 22, a Rima College student, said he carried the victim while his friends tried in vain to stop a taxi. Many taxis waiting to pick up LRT commuters refused to budge. A passerby then called for an ambulance.
Note: Abdel Aziz first enrolled with the International Islamic University of Malaysia before switching to HELP University College.
His father, who runs a palm oil import-export business, was informed about the tragedy on Sunday night and his brother will arrive today to claim the remains
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This is just too sad.
The failure of our education system to raise young Malaysians who are color blind, understanding, & critical in thinking.
The failure of parents to guide their children to be kind, understanding & peace loving.
I hope the people who are responsible will be punished severely.
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Gunman kills 10 in Finnish school shooting
By Attila Cser
KAUHAJOKI, Finland (Reuters) - A student shot dead 10 people at a vocational school on Tuesday, Finland's second such attack in less than a year and just one day after the gunman was interviewed by police over Internet postings.
The killer, 22-year-old Matti Saari, started a fire in the school and then shot himself in the head. He died later in Tampere University Hospital.
"A cold-blooded shooter entered the building with an automatic pistol and started cutting down students," said Jukka Forsberg, a maintenance man at the post-secondary school in the town of Kauhajoki where the shooting occurred.
"He also shot towards me, did not say anything and once the bullets started to whizz by I started running for my life."
Police said identification of the bodies was slow because of blaze started by the gunman.
"The site has suffered from fires and the victims have been partially burnt," said police Chief Superintendent Urpo Lintala.
In an echo of last year's deadly rampage at Finland's Jokela high school, Saari posted menacing comments and videos of himself wielding a gun on the Internet in the run-up the massacre, prompting police to question him on Monday.
Officers did not confiscate the gun, Interior Minister Anne Holmlund told a news conference. She gave no details of the interview, but said police did not ask him to surrender the gun because they decided he had made no specific threats.
"Police action will be examined in more detail later. The gunman had a temporary permit for a .22 calibre pistol, and he had received it in August 2008. It was his first gun," she said.
Gun ownership in Finland is among the highest in the world, but crime rates in general are low.
Up until last year's shooting, Finnish authorities had resisted tighter European Union restrictions on guns.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said Finland should consider banning private handguns altogether, saying a new stricter European-wide gun law was not enough.
"It is not enough to talk about age limits or interviews ... after two such tragic incidents, we have to discuss whether private people can be allowed to have handguns," Vanhanen told Finnish broadcaster MTV3.
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I totally disagree with firearm ownership, even though it's for self defense. It's just too dangerous. Haven't we learnt anything from all these public shooting tragedies?__________________________________________________________________
China Says Complaints About Milk Began in 2007
Published: September 23, 2008
SHANGHAI — One of China’s biggest dairy producers received consumer complaints about its baby milk formula as early as December 2007 — much earlier than previously thought and 10 months before the producer ordered a nationwide recall because of concerns that the formula had been adulterated with a toxic industrial chemical, state media said Tuesday.
The disclosure, in a government report publicized by the official Xinhua News Agency, is the latest indication that the producer, Sanlu Group, had repeatedly tried to hide information about its contaminated dairy supplies from the public.
Powdered milk formula in China tainted by melamine, a chemical compound, has already sickened more than 53,000 infants and killed three children nationwide, according to the Health Ministry, leading to recalls of Chinese-made dairy products in China and other parts of Asia, devastating this nation’s huge dairy industry and casting a renewed pall over the quality of Chinese food production. Officials at the Sanlu Group, which is based in northern China’s Hebei Province, could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.
The government report did not include details about the nature or number of consumer complaints but put the timing of when they began at least six months earlier than first reported.
Earlier this month, government investigators said that Sanlu officials had delayed acting on consumer complaints and warnings in June, and that local government officials in Hebei knew of the problems in early August, just before the Olympic Games opened in Beijing.
Sanlu announced a nationwide recall in early September.
The Fonterra Group of New Zealand, which is one of the world’s biggest dairy exporters and has a 43 percent stake in Sanlu, says it pressed its Chinese partner to announce a recall in August, but company and local government officials refused.
Food safety experts say the delays may have allowed the tainted powdered milk supplies to spread more widely, making tens of thousands of children ill.
The delays have led to widespread speculation in China that Sanlu and some government officials were trying to cover up the problem during the Olympics because Beijing had pressed Chinese journalists and companies not to release negative news.
In the two weeks since reports spread about the contamination and sickness, though, the milk recall has mushroomed, with worried parents rushing to hospitals, supermarket chains pulling dairy products off shelves and dairy farmers dumping milk because no one is willing to drink it.
China’s dairy industry has been booming for more than a decade, with the aid of a government initiative to get Chinese to drink more milk.
But worries about baby formula tainted with melamine, which is used to produce plastics and fertilizer, led to government checks that uncovered evidence that products made by 21 other dairy producers, including some of China’s best known dairy brands, have also been tainted by melamine.
On Monday, the government announced that the head of the nation’s quality watchdog had been forced to resign for failing to properly supervise the dairy market. Several government officials from Hebei Province have also been forced to step down, along with the chairwoman of the Sanlu Group.
The government announced Tuesday that more than 7,000 tons of dairy products had been removed from store shelves. Also on Tuesday, the Ministry of Agriculture said the nation’s dairy collection system was “out of control,” The Associated Press reported, making it possible for unscrupulous businesses to intentionally spike dairy supplies with melamine, which can be used to illegally and artificially inflate the protein count in milk and other foods.
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My friend said this is like a 'massacre' and i couldn't agree more. These despicable bastards are worst than animal. Just because of money, they have endangered (even killed) the life of thousands of innocent children! I hope they will be justly punished for their inhuman crime.
