Missing my Motherland, always…
Only Cambodian legendary singers from Golden Era, like Ros Sereysothea, Sinn Sisamuth, Huy Meas, Sos Math, can console and comfort me. Telling me that one day, I will be there again, living a peaceful life with all my beautiful people, especially the poor and the farmers.
Caption: These extraordinary accounts of Islamic State’s prisoner-of-war camps,
gathered by IAN BIRRELL in Irbil and Dohuk, reveal for the first time
the appalling reality of life for captives held in Iraq. They include
the story of 17-year-old Nisreen, who was one of 96 Yazidi girls
kidnapped when their towns and villages fell to the fanatics. Another
captive, Hayam (right) was eight months pregnant when she was kidnapped
along with her husband’s brother and four younger sisters. Pictured:
Children who had to flee their homes seek solace in sleep in a refugee
camp in Irbil (bottom left), while a mother looks after her children at
another camp (top left).
Please, let American jets bomb my prison… death is better than to be forced off with a strange man: 8 months pregnant, captured by Islamic thugs waging ‘Sexual Holy War’ – one woman issues a heartrending plea
By IAN BIRRELL IN DOHUK, Mail Online, August 16, 2014
The call came in the early hours, the voice muffled, furtive and shaking with fear. ‘If they see me talking to someone they will kill me for sure, maybe kill all of us.’
This was Nisreen, a 17-year-old seized by the vicious Islamic State forces who have swept through Iraq and Syria spreading fear and panic.
She told how she was one of 96 Yazidi girls kidnapped when their towns and villages fell to the fanatics.
Now these teenagers wait in terror to be sold into slavery or forced into marriage with militant Islamists.
‘I know this exact number because I hear them talking,’ said Nisreen. ‘We are sure they have sold us. We do not fear for our lives but for our dignity as women.’
It was a brave phone call from a desperate woman.
The world has heard the hideous stories of refugees fleeing the jihadists but here, for the first time, was a voice from the other side: from a kidnap victim trapped in IS’s newly-won territory.
The husband of another teenage woman, heavily pregnant, held captive by the IS told me how she would rather the US bombed her prison – with her inside – than be handed out like a piece of property to an extremist fighter.
She said: ‘Let those jets come to bomb us and save us from this situation by killing all of us.’ She added death would be a better fate than to ‘be forced off with a strange man.’
These two extraordinary accounts, together with information gathered from numerous first-hand sources in and around Irbil and Dohuk in the past week, reveal for the first time the appalling reality of life for captives held in IS-held Iraq.
Horrifically, we can reveal:
The detailed evidence comes from captive women talking from their prisons, dozens of desperate families, a leaked United Nations report and activists collating information amid the chaos of Iraqi Kurdistan with 200,000 refugees driven from their homes by militants.
There are also sources I cannot reveal for fear of endangering courageous informants.
Their stories are shocking and strikingly similar, whether from the hostage themselves, husbands talking to captured wives, fathers whose daughters and sons are behind bars, even escaped children who witnessed parents marched off by IS forces under black flags.
In an exclusive interview offering disturbing insight into their cruel zealotry and callous practices, IS prison official Abu Obaida detailed the stark options confronting seized women and girls.
He confirmed forcing children into militant Islam and explained why Christians can pay to flee their clutches, but not Yazidis. He even invited me to go and live under the medieval Caliphate declared by IS.
Thousands were seized when Sinjar, an historic centre for the Yazidi sect, fell a fortnight ago.
Many more fled into nearby mountains, terrified by stories of IS savagery such as beheading and crucifying their enemies, and are now refugees in Iraqi Kurdistan.
The hostages – two thirds of whom are women, according to Yazidi activists – are held in prisons, schools, sports centres, mosques, hospitals and even private homes in areas under IS control.
Nisreen was taken from her home village to Mosul, Iraq’s second city which fell in June, then into Syria for a week. She was bought back by bus to an Iraqi prison for three days, then moved to a location I promised not to reveal from where she made that courageous call.
She is just one among many. As I toured building sites, schools, roadsides and camps crammed with Yazidi refugees last week, I heard story after heartbreaking story.
Faysal Sherif, 27, was finishing his masters degree in microbiology at a Turkish university when the Islamists drove forward. His 24-year-old wife and infant son were seized along with 39 other members of her family and all their possessions.
The men were tied up in the centre of their village, then not heard from again, while the women and children were taken to Telafar prison for 12 days then moved to a nearby school.
His wife, having hidden her mobile phone, calls her distraught husband daily. ‘When we talk they are crying and wailing,’ said Faysal. ‘They told the women either you convert to Islam or you die of starvation. Many children are dying of dehydration.’
‘They get just one piece of bread a day. The children get one can of milk between ten each day. My son has had diarrhea for ten days now –he will surely die soon.
‘We need help from the UK, the US, the United Nations. Anyone. Every minute, every hour is costing lives.’
Salem, a 19-year-old handyman, fled into the Sinjar mountains after fighting for four hours against the Islamist militia until their bullets ran out.
His wife Hayam was captured, although eight months pregnant, along with his brother and four younger sisters. He had left Hayam with spare batteries for her mobile phone. She called him several times from a centre crammed with kidnapped women and children, saying they are being ‘tortured’ with starvation and too little drink in the searing heat.
The women have been told they will stay in the school until they convert. Salem added: ‘Some children are still there, some have been taken away.
They were told the children are being taken away to teach them the laws of Islam. Some are in Syria, some are in Mosul.’
As he told his tragic story, this young man’s distress was palpable; he broke down at one point in tears. His parents are also both missing.
He has contacted Kurdish politicians and Yazidi activists to persuade the US to destroy the school holding his wife. ‘They say death is better than to be forced off with a strange man for the rest of your life.’
All those I spoke to were adamant that conversion was not an option. One authoritative source revealed how a teenage captive killed herself when ordered to wash and change clothes for the first time after 12 days in prison, fearing she was being married off.
‘Every day we do not liberate these girls and women means we lose some more to IS,’ said Narin Shammo, a Yazidi journalist, who has been using social media to try to establish the number of captives. In one day alone, she received 657 possible new cases.
From the start of its rise during the Syrian civil war, IS – formerly called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria – has used the most inhumane tactics, combined with kidnapping and hostage-taking to raise funds.
One Iraqi soldier told me he was part of a group captured in June. Ten Shia Muslim and 5 Yazidi troops were instantly murdered by the militants. More than 20 survivors were taken to Syria, then each of their families was told to pay $50,000 to save their lives.
All eventually paid up except for one soldier from a very poor family who negotiated a cut-price deal. This single action alone raised more than $1million.
The Iraqis, blindfolded while in prison, said they were warned to tell the truth during interrogations ‘because the chief is an American who has graduated from college’. It is estimated up to one-third of IS forces are foreigners.Such activities have increased since the recent collapse of large chunks of Iraq into the Caliphate.
Christians are given a choice of conversion or payment of an annual tithe if they wish to stay in their homes but most fled in fear.
The Yazidi, a Kurdish sect falsely seen as devil-worshippers by the extremists due to their ancient beliefs, are treated far more harshly with a choice only of conversion or death.
Shivan, a Yazidi soldier in the Iraqi army, claimed IS took 700 people from his three local towns alone. ‘They started taking the girls and women, killing many of the men whose bodies were left lying on the streets.
They said they were taking the women to Talafar prison, to Badash prison, to Mosul.’
Like others, he alleged some local Arabs sided with IS and turned on former friends and neighbours.
A ten-year-old boy called Daud told of seeing his parents seized. He said men with military clothing and black flags fluttering from four-wheel vehicles stopped his family fleeing.
‘We were taken back to the village and they started to line us up against a wall,’ the child said. ‘They stood us there, then left with lots of people. They took my mother and father.’
Such tales of misery pile up in places where Yazidi seek sanctuary. One man told of 42 missing relatives, another of 14 taken from his wife’s family, a third of 150 kidnapped from his village.
Lurid rumours are circulating of enforced cannibalism, of mass rape, of mothers made to set themselves on fire. And internal UN documents from their mission in Iraq quote reports that IS ‘elements’ killed ‘well over 500 Yazidi individuals’ in retaliation for the first US air strikes last week, according to a source there.
Alarmingly the UN also believes Kurdish Peshmerga forces are being ‘overwhelmed on numerous fronts’ by IS, which has more troops and better equipment.
The abuse and atrocities were confirmed quite happily by the IS official enforcing extreme Islamic rules in Telafar prison when we spoke on Thursday night.
Extraordinary interviews: Ian Birrell in Dohuk
Obaida, an Iraqi from Mosul, insisted his religious laws permitted the kidnap and sale of women. He said: ‘If they convert to Islam they can go back to their homes and we will protect their dignity and safety.
‘But if they resist or turn to atheism they will be like slaves and will be judged and traded according to our laws towards slaves.
‘Selling is according to sharia because they are slaves. But we have not sold anyone yet.’ Obaida claimed some Yazidi had converted, but could only get their wives back if they too agreed to become Muslims. ‘It is not possible in Islam to f*** atheist women.’
He said the captured children were ‘safe’, although added chillingly they would be brought up under their ‘essentials’ of Islam. ‘Then we will release them and provide for them for a proper life.’
This polite bigot said the Yazidi were singled out for special treatment because unlike Jews and Christians, ‘they are not people of the book’.
He said IS would fight until they all converted to Islam as part of their mission to drive non-Muslims from their Caliphate.The only question he refused to answer was over IS foreign fighters. ‘I cannot talk about this subject,’ he said.
Asked about extending their struggle to Western countries, Obaida said this would be decided by the ‘minister of war’ appointed by their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – a man reportedly radicalised during detention after the US-led invasion of 2003.
‘We will fight the USA because they are using Arab rulers to fight us,’ Obaida added. ‘But we do not want massacres, we do not want fighting. We just want all these people to convert to Islam so their dignity, money and safety is with us.’
Such fine talk. Yet words such as dignity and safety could not be further removed from the latest hell that his fanatical forces have unleashed on Iraq, especially for those frightened women such as Nisreen cowering in their cells as they await sale like cattle in a market.
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| Hannah Stone, 27, is the official harpist for the Prince of Wales and as been spotted attending Terfel’s concerts. Getty Images |
By NIC NORTH and AMANDA PERTHEN FOR MAIL, August 17, 2014
Britain’s biggest opera star, Bryn Terfel, is dating a married blonde virtuoso 20 years his junior.
The Welsh bass-baritone is said to be on holiday in Spain with 27-year-old Hannah Stone, the Prince of Wales’s official harpist.
Friends have told The Mail on Sunday that the couple are ‘very happy’ and planning a future together after they were spotted attending each other’s concerts and the relationship became known in classical music circles.
Chandra Bahadur Dangi, the world’s shortest man and Jyoti Amge, the world’s shortest woman met for the first time to celebrate the organisation which made them famous. The 18-year-old from India and the 72-year-old Nepalese both made headlines last winter when they were given their titles.
By GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS NEWS
Published August 29, 2012
Guinnessworldrecords.com can today reveal a sneak preview of the 57th edition of the world’s best-selling copyright book, Guinness World Records 2013, with these exclusive pictures and video of the world’s Shortest Man, Chandra Bahadur Dangi (54.6 cm), and the world’s Shortest Woman, Jyoti Amge (62.8 cm), who met for the first time for the production of the new book.
The historic moment was recorded earlier this year and is the first time in history the shortest male and female in the world have met. Each wore traditional outfits from their native countries and smiled and laughed throughout.
To add scale to the picture, the classic Guinness World Records book – which measures 1ft tall (30cm) – was placed in between them.
Marco Frigatti, Official Guinness World Records Adjudicator, who also took part in the shoot, said: “It was an extraordinary moment; they’re both such incredible individuals. Everyone knew this was a special moment, the atmosphere was magical.”
The picture and new footage coincides with the recent announcement that the world’s Shortest Woman, Jyoti Amge, will visit the UK on the 13th of September to help launch the new Guinness World Records 2013 book.
Jyoti, from Nagpur, India, took the title of Shortest Living Woman when she reached the age of 18 in December last year.
She has a form of dwarfism called Achondroplasia and won’t grow any taller than her current height. Due to her size, she has to have clothes and jewellery specially made. She sleeps in a tiny bed and uses special plates and cutlery to eat. She loves fashion and make-up and is currently pursuing her dream of becoming successful actress in the movie business. She has already starred in a number of Indian films.
Jyoti said: “Since being recognised by Guinness World Records I have been able to visit lots of different countries. I love travelling. I have visited Japan and parts of Europe and now I can’t wait to visit the UK.”
In February this year, Chandra Bahadur Dangi from Nepal made headlines across the globe when he was crowned the world’s Shortest Man, standing at 54.6 cm (21.5 in). His size also meant that he inherited the title of Shortest Man in history, breaking the previous record of India’s Gul Mohammed (1957-97) who was 57 cm (22.5 in) tall.
Chandra is 72 years old and weighs 14.5 kg (31 lb 15 oz). Until the recent record announcement, he had spent his entire life in the remote Nepalese mountain village of Rhimkholi, about 250 miles west of Kathmandu. He said: “I’m very happy that I’m being recognized by Guinness World Records and that my name will be written in a book. It’s a big thing for my family, my village and my country. I am very happy.”
The latest edition of the world’s best-selling copyright book was first published in 1955 and has sold over 120 million copies to date in over 100 countries. For more amazing world records including the latest records in science, nature, sport, entertainment and everything else, check out the new Guinness World Records 2013 Edition available worldwide on Thursday 13th September.
The Smallest Woman In The World. She has such a cute and lovely voice. A girl who is so small but can do so many things!
A girl the size of a large watermelon became the world’s smallest woman. Tiny two feet tall Jyoti Amge, of Nagpur, India, celebrated the occasion with a birthday cake almost as big as her. Jyoti, who was already widely regarded as the world’s smallest girl, is anxiously waiting for confirmation she has grabbed the title from 2ft 3in American record holder Bridgette Jordan. NAGPUR, INDIA – DECEMBER 07
FOLLOWING SIMPLE PROGRAMMED RULES, AUTONOMOUS ROBOTS ARRANGE THEMSELVES INTO VAST, COMPLEX SHAPES
By Caroline Perry, August 14, 2014
Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Cambridge, Mass. – August 14, 2014 – The first thousand-robot flash mob has assembled at Harvard University.
“Form a sea star shape,” directs a computer scientist, sending the command to 1,024 little bots simultaneously via an infrared light. The robots begin to blink at one another and then gradually arrange themselves into a five-pointed star. “Now form the letter K.”
The ‘K’ stands for Kilobots, the name given to these extremely simple robots, each just a few centimeters across, standing on three pin-like legs. Instead of one highly-complex robot, a “kilo” of robots collaborate, providing a simple platform for the enactment of complex behaviors.
Just as trillions of individual cells can assemble into an intelligent organism, or a thousand starlings can form a great flowing murmuration across the sky, the Kilobots demonstrate how complexity can arise from very simple behaviors performed en masse. To computer scientists, they also represent a significant milestone in the development of collective artificial intelligence (AI).
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| The Kilobots, a swarm of one thousand simple but collaborative robots. (Photo courtesy of Mike Rubenstein and Science/AAAS.) |
ព្រះត្រៃបិដក ប្រែថា កញ្រ្ចែង ឬ ល្អី ៣ សម្រាប់ដាក់ផ្ទុកពាក្យពេចន៍នៃព្រះសម្មាសម្ពុទ្ធ
The Tipitaka or Pali canon, is the collection of primary Pali language texts which form the doctrinal foundation of Theravada Buddhism. The three divisions of the Tipitaka are: Vinaya Pitaka, Sutta Pitaka, Abhidhamma Pitaka.
វចនានុក្រមសម្តេចសង្ឃ ជួន ណាត
Desktop version
Listen to Khmer literature and Dhamma talk by His Holiness Jotannano Chuon Nath, Supreme Patriarch of Cambodia Buddhism.
Should anyone wish to ridicule me and make me an object of jest and scorn why should I possibly care if I have dedicated myself to others?
Let them do as they wish with me so long as it does not harm them. May no one who encounters me ever have an insignificant contact.
Regardless whether those whom I meet respond towards me with anger or faith, may the mere fact of our meeting contribute to the fulfilment of their wishes.
May the slander, harm and all forms of abuse that anyone should direct towards me act as a cause of their enlightenment.
As a solid rock is not shaken by the wind, so the wise are not shaken by blame and praise. As a deep lake is clear and calm, so the wise become tranquil after they listened to the truth…
Good people walk on regardless of what happens to them. Good people do not babble on about their desires. Whether touched by happiness or by sorrow, the wise never appear elated or depressed. ~The Dhammapada
