Pakistan releases 145 Indian prisoners

Agencies

December 29, 2017

Lahore, Dec 29: One hundred and forty-five Indian fishermen today crossed the Wagah border into India after Pakistani authorities released them from jail.

The Indian fishermen were brought here on a train from Karachi this morning.

The Edhi Foundation provided them with cloths and Rs 5,000 each.

"We also served them lunch before they crossed the Wagah border into their homeland," Edhi Lahore spokesman Muhammad Younas told PTI.

He said it took a little long as the fishermen were handed over to the Indian authorities by the Pakistan Rangers after going through their papers. "Some 11 months ago my boat's engine stopped and I was arrested (by Pakistan's Maritime Security Agency). I am happy to go back home," a fisherman who was sitting in a queue at Wagah border, said.

All 145 Indian fishermen were languishing in Malir jail in Sindh province of Pakistan.

Indian fishermen are usually arrested by the PMSA which is responsible for guarding and protecting Pakistan's territorial waters.

Both India and Pakistan routinely arrest each other's fishermen who cross over the unclear and disputed water border of Sir Creek which opens up in the Arabian Sea and divides the Pakistani province of Sindh from the state of Gujarat.

Once arrested, fishermen from India are first brought to the Docks police station and from there they are sent to the Malir jail.

Owing to lengthy and slow bureaucratic and legal procedures, the fishermen usually remain in jail for several months.

A number of non-governmental organisations in both India and Pakistan have raised the issue, pressing their governments to release arrested fishermen without much delay.

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Trump’s associates told to avoid racist language making them ‘look like Nazis’

News Network

November 18,2024

Advisors to US President-elect Donald Trump have instructed his allies and associates to refrain from using the inflammatory language they previously employed when discussing issues related to migrants and the deportation of asylum seekers, in a bid to avoid “looking like Nazis.”

US media reports said that Trump’s associates had been asked to stop using the word “camps” to describe potential facilities that would be used to accommodate migrants rounded up in deportation operations across the country.

The reports said the US president-elect’s allies had been ordered to stave off such charged terms as they would bring to mind “Nazis,” and be used against Trump.

“I have received some guidance to avoid terms, like ‘camps,’ that can be twisted and used against the president, yes,” one Trump ally told American monthly magazine Rolling Stone.

“Apparently, some people think it makes us look like Nazis.”

The presidential advisers also cautioned surrogates and allies to keep racist terms, which have dogged Trump’s campaign, out of their remarks.

They said with Trump’s heated rhetoric that used to compare undocumented immigrants to “animals” and his slight that they are “poisoning the blood of our country,” detractors did not need to reach too far to find parallels to Nazi Germany.

Stephen Miller, who Trump tapped to be his deputy chief of staff of policy, specifically used the word “camps” to describe holding facilities that he hoped the military could put together for immigrants.

Tom Homan, who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is chosen by Trump to be in charge of the US borders, was no stranger to such language.

“It’s not gonna be a mass sweep of neighborhoods,” he said in an interview earlier this week. “It’s not gonna be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous.”

Becoming a little more forthright about the new government’s aggressive deportation plans, Homan likened the early days of the Trump administration to the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“I got three words for them – shock and awe,” he said. “You’re going to see us take this country back.”

Trump made immigration a central element of his 2024 presidential campaign but unlike his first run, which was mainly focused on building a border wall, he has shifted his attention to interior enforcement and the removal of undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

People close to the US president and his aides are laying the groundwork for expanding detention facilities to fulfill his mass deportation campaign promise.

The businessman-turned-politician deported more than 1.5 million people during his first term.

The figure do not include the millions of people turned away at the border under a Covid-era policy enacted by Trump and used during most of Biden’s term.

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