Demonstrators in Quetta, Pakistan, burn a U.S. flag and a poster
bearing
George Washington's image, March 16. Supporters from
KhiljiQaumiIttehad International and AwamiMajlisAmal
Pakistan
held the demonstration
against the killing of at least 16 villagers in
Afghanistan's Jalalabad Province by a
U.S. soldier, and condemned
the burning of copies of
the Quran at a NATO base in Afghanistan.
Kayhan, Islamic
Republic of Iran
American ‘Killed Afghans to Divert Attention from
Burnings of Holy Quran’
Could it be that in an effort to end protests against the inadvertent burning of two Qurans, reportedly used by prisoners to pass messages on to one another, the United States decided to massacre innocent Afghans? This ‘news item’ from Iran’s state-run Kayhan newspaper, conveniently ignoring Tehran's own ruthless crackdown on peaceful protesters, also criticizes Saudi Arabia for helping put down the ongoing uprising in Bahrain.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, a former congressman and number cruncher at the Office of Management and Budget, confronts perhaps the greatest crisis in his career with the mess in Afghanistan.
TEHRAN:
At Friday prayers, senior cleric Ayatollah Muhammad Emami-Kashani
said that the recent massacre of innocent Afghans by a U.S. soldier was a
deliberate effort by Washington to divert attention from its desecration of the
Holy Quran. Fully understanding its power to rule and change the world, Western
powers are hostile toward Islam, Ayatollah Emami-Kashani
said.
In
Afghanistan's southern Kandahar Province on March 11, an American soldier went
on a shooting spree, killing at least 17 innocent Afghan civilians and wounding
several others.
The
incident came in the wake of violent clashes over Quran burnings by U.S.-led
forces, which left over 30 people dead, including six American soldiers, and about
180 others injured.
Ayatollah
Emami-Kashani further pointed to Bahraini protests against
their regime, saying that the movement in that country, rooted as it is in
Islam, is similar to those in Egypt and Tunisia.
“Saudi
Arabia says the uprising of the Bahraini people is against Islam. Which Islam
do they mean? Is it the Islam that America proposes or the Islam that remains
silent when Muslims are killings or Qurans are burned?”
"There
is no difference between the Bahraini nation's uprising and the Tunisian,
Egyptian and Libyan uprisings," he said, calling on revolutionary
countries to remain vigilant about the hijacking of their revolutions by
anti-Muslim hegemonic powers.
He
also lashed out at Saudi Arabia for its double standards toward countries in
the region.
Bahrainis
have been holding anti-government demonstrations since mid-February 2011,
calling on the U.S.-backed Al
Khalifa family to leave power.
On
March 14, 2011, Saudi troops entered Bahrain to assist the regime in Manama in quelling
peaceful protests on the Persian Gulf Island. According to local sources,
scores of people have been killed and hundreds have been arrested in the
Saudi-backed regime crackdown.
Military
Intervention
Deputy
Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hussein Amir-Abdullahian
asserted that foreign military intervention in Bahrain and the continued occupation
of the country by Saudi Arabia is absolutely wrong.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
Amir-Abdullahian said that these unwise military operations in
Bahrain had several undesirable consequences which worsened the situation and
threatened regional security. With Bahrain’s military occupation, any opportunity
for a political and democratic solution was lost Bahraini sovereignty was
tainted by a neighboring Arab state.
Amir-Abdullahian said the third undesirable consequence of Saudi
military action was the murder and oppression of Bahrain’s citizens, whether
they be Shiite or Sunni. He said the rigid military
and security atmosphere governing the country over the past year had led to the
systematic violation of human rights. He stressed that these policies had set
Bahraini political reform back by decades.
The
deputy foreign minister said that the solution to the crisis in Bahrain is
political, and that success in this direction will requires serious attention
to the demands of the people, confidence building, an end to the massacres and
oppression and the start of effective negotiations without political hypocrisy.
