31 killed in caste riots in India
At least 31 people have been killed and scores injured in western India in two days of clashes between police and members of a farming caste demanding job quotas for their community.
The violence began on Friday when protesters belonging to the Gujjar caste lynched a policeman in Bharatpur district in Rajasthan state, G C Kataria, the state's home minister, told reporters.
Police shot at protesters as they tried to damage railway lines and government property, he said. At least 15 were killed.
On Saturday, the army was called in to help calm the violence as another 15 people were killed when police shot at a mob protesters trying to torch a police in Sikandra.
Thousands of protesters were blocking a rail route between Delhi and Mumbai, police said. Highways have also been blocked, and state authorities have cancelled many buses.
Gujjars are already considered among the low born in India's complex caste hierarchy. They want to be thought of as even lower – a so-called scheduled tribe – so they can qualify for the nearly half of all government jobs and state college seats reserved solely for the lowest castes, who tend to be poorer than their high-caste compatriots.
But a state government committee did not agree, and announced instead it would spend 2.82 billion rupees ($NZ86.55 million) improving schools, clinics, roads and other infrastructure in Gujjar-dominated areas.
The protesters do not want the money.
"We do not accept the economic package," K S Bainsla, the head of the main Gujjar protest organisation, told reporters. He said the state government must write to New Delhi recommending Gujjars be recategorised. "We'll not accept anything less."
A year ago, Gujjars in Rajasthan fought police and members of another caste that already qualifies for job quotas. At least 26 people were killed in that violence.
Reuters
6 killed in Colombian earthquake
At least six people have been killed after a shallow, 5.6-magnitude earthquake hit Colombia, destroying homes and shaking buildings in the capital Bogota, where panicked residents fled into the streets.
Three people, including a small baby, were killed when an avalanche crushed their car and three more died in landslides. The quake blocked a highway out of Bogota and flattened ten houses and a church near the epicentre, authorities said.
"They died trapped by landslides," President Alvaro Uribe told a community meeting where he updated the death toll.
At least eight other people were injured by the quake, which was centered 54km east-southeast of Bogota at a depth of 10km, the US Geological Survey said.
The USGS earlier measured the quake at 5.7 magnitude at a depth of 3.5km.
Bogota Mayor Samuel Moreno told local radio some buildings in the city were slightly damaged, but there were no reports of victims in the Andean country's capital.
"The report we have so far is that it was strong and some structures have suffered damage," Moreno said.
One Bogota government building was evacuated after the quake sent a shower of bricks tumbling off one of its walls.
Colombia's coffee-growing region was hit in 1999 by a 6.2-magnitude quake that killed 1230 people and left more than 250,000 homeless in the country's worst natural disaster in the last decade
Reuters
Mugabe wants to 'decimate Zimbabwe opposition'
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has returned to Zimbabwe for an election run-off with President Robert Mugabe.
Tsvangirai arrived at Harare airport aboard a regular South African Airways flight around 1030 GMT after cancelling his homecoming a week ago after his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said it had learnt he was the target of a military intelligence assassination plot.
The government dismissed the plot as a propaganda stunt.
Tsvangirai told a news conference that Mugabe and the ruling ZANU-PF party had launched a concerted campaign against the MDC, which has seen 42 people killed and tens of thousands displaced.
"ZANU-PF wants to decimate MDC structures," Tsvangirai said, adding that many opposition officials were in hiding.
He said he was confident of victory, although conditions are not conducive for a free and fair election and ZANU-PF was trying to destroy his MDC before the run-off.
"The conditions on the ground for a run-off are not perfect, and will never be perfect. But we are saying with the support of SADC (Southern African Development Community), putting in election observers and peacekeepers, we can instil confidence in the people of Zimbabwe".
The MDC chief was cheered by party officials at the news conference when he vowed to knock out Mugabe in the second round, saying he was drawing fresh inspiration from victims of political violence:
"I was in the hospital today, people with scars, wounds, all saying: 'President, we will finish him off, don't let us down'."
Tsvangirai has been travelling abroad since April 8 on a diplomatic drive to pressure Mugabe to surrender power following a March 29 presidential poll, which he says he won outright.
But Zimbabwe's electoral commission says he did not get enough votes for a straight victory and must face Mugabe in a June 27 run-off.
Tsvangirai said the regional SADC will hold a meeting on the run-off vote next Tuesday at which sending regional peacekeepers to Zimbabwe will be discussed.
"But I told them that by the 1st of June they should put these people on the ground otherwise we don't need them. You can't have peacekeepers and observers two weeks before an election because they will not be of any benefit. What we want is a complete demilitarisation of the situation," he added.
SADC, which is due to monitor the run-off, said this month that conditions were neither safe nor fair yet for a fresh vote.
Zimbabweans hope the run-off will start recovery from an economic collapse that has brought 165,000 per cent inflation, 80 per cent unemployment, chronic food and fuel shortages and has sent millions fleeing to nearby countries.
The MDC has vowed to "bury" Mugabe in the run-off, ending his uninterrupted rule since independence from Britain in 1980.
But the 84-year-old veteran leader has also vowed that he will win the June 27 poll because his ZANU-PF could not afford to lose power to an opposition backed by "white imperialists."
Mugabe says the MDC enjoys the backing of Western powers out to oust him over his seizure of white-owned farms to give to landless blacks. The MDC denies the charge.
Mugabe's party lost control of parliament on March 29 for the first time since it came to power, and the opposition says the former guerrilla leader can only win the June 27 re-run through violence and rigging votes.
"If Mugabe thinks he has beaten people into submission, he will have a rude shock on the 27th," Tsvangirai said.
A 30-year-old man, in a small crowd of people who saw Tsvangirai's convoy arriving at a city hotel for the news conference, said he was happy the MDC leader had returned home.
"I don't think he should have stayed away for so long, but I think MDC supporters will support him, and I hope he wins," said the man, who declined to give his name.
Reuters
