India's Changing Image Abroad

NEW JERSEY, DEC 23: The rising profile of Indian professionals abroad is directly related to the growing culture and thirst for education, now one of the fastest growing activities in India, says the editor, India Focus.

In an article in The Financial Express, India focus editor Subhash Agrawal, says that India's middle class is saving, borrowing and toiling for the right academic opportunity for its children as never before, even though a good degree can be very expensive for the average family.

Going abroad for studies has now become such a standard practice that every year more than 50,000 Indian students join foreign universities. In fact, by the end of 2002, India already surpassed China as the leading country of origin for international students in the United States. For every one student China sends to university, India sends six, according to Agrawal.

In fact, nowhere is India�s educational profile more in the spotlight than via its diaspora community of engineers, doctors, writers, academics and management gurus. Generally speaking, and with perhaps the exception of Gulf countries, where the bulk of Indian expatriates are low-skilled workers on short-term contracts, the vast majority of ethnic Indians living abroad tend to be very well educated, if not very well paid, observes Agrawal.

As per the last official census in the UK, the average income of Indian living in Britain was about 15% higher than the national average, while in Canada it was 20% higher.

In the US, where this has been meticulously documented by a report 'We the People: Asians in the United States', that was issued by the government some time ago and was based on the 2000 census, emigre Indians have the highest per capita income of any ethnic group, including the Chinese.

This report found that Indian migrants had higher incomes and educational levels than not just the average US family but also virtually every other Asian community. For example, 64% of Indians held a bachelor�s degree or more, as compared to 48% among Chinese or 54% among Pakistanis.

So far so good, but education remains tightly controlled and poorly supervised by the government in India, in effect reducing both quantity and quality in one stroke.

Bombing rocks Ohio mosque
By Masood Haider

NEW YORK. DEC 22. More than two dozen religious leaders and public officials gathered at the Islamic Association of Cincinnati Mosque Wednesday to condemn the Tuesday night bombing of the group�s buildings in Cincinnati.

The religious leaders called the incident a despicable hate crime that will not be tolerated in the Greater Cincinnati area.

The FBI offered a $15,000 reward Thursday for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the bombing. The Council on American-Islamic Relations also offered a reward of $5,000 for information about the explosions.

On Tuesday two explosions caused minor exterior damage at a mosque complex in Cincinnati (Ohio) about two hours after evening prayers, local police and US federal agents joined the investigation.

No injuries were reported, but they could have been deadly if anyone had been nearby, said FBI agent Stanley Borgia.

Police haven't found any witnesses to the Tuesday night explosions at the Islamic Association of Cincinnati mosque, police Capt. Gene Hamann said.

Members of the Islamic Association of Cincinnati inspect bomb damage around a door in Cincinnati, Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2005, where two explosions were reported Tuesday night, about two hours after evening prayers ended. No injuries have been reported. (AP Photo/Tom Uhlman)

The mosque is about a mile from the University of Cincinnati campus and near several churches and Hebrew Union College.

About 300 to 500 people worship at the mosque on a typical Friday, said Karen Dabdoub, director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Cincinnati.

"This is very disturbing," she said. "And not only for this mosque and our community, but for the Islamic community in and around greater Cincinnati."

The FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were involved in the case, joining Cincinnati and State Highway Patrol State investigators, FBI Special agent Mike Brooks said.

�What happened here last night was wrong, hateful and evil,�� said Cincinnati Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk.

Rabbi Abie I. Ingber, president of the Greater Cincinnati Board of Rabbis, called the bombing incident �a deplorable act toward everyone� in the Greater Cincinnati community.

�The Muslim community is deeply concerned about this event and we are hoping that it can be quickly determined who committed the crime,�� Dr. Inayat Malik, president of the Islamic Educational Council, said in a statement.

Stanley Borgia, special agent in charge of the Cincinnati FBI office, said the investigation has not yet determined a motive for �the crime of violence against the Islamic Center. The intent of perpetrators is unclear,�� he said.

Abducted Pakistanis elaborate claims

NEW JERSEY, DEC 20: Eight Pakistanis have already testified that they were kidnapped from their homes in Athens and interrogated after the terrorist bombings in London in July.

Prosecutor Nikos Vegaitis, who has been assigned to the case by Athens prosecutor Dimitris Papangelopoulos told Greek English newspaper Kathimerini.

Athens prosecutor Dimitris Papangelopoulos, responsible for overseeing the probe allegations that Pakistani migrants were allegedly abducted and questioned by security forces, said yesterday that his office had the �guts� to get to the bottom of the claims.

Speaking after a meeting with Supreme Court prosecutor Dimitris Linos, Papangelopoulos said that if police officers had acted improperly they would be prosecuted.

The migrants said they were blindfolded and taken on a journey of an hour-and-a-half. Vegaitis, the assigned prosecutor to the case, said their heads were covered with hoods and they were questioned about relatives in London by men speaking Greek. None of the migrants was tortured.

Human rights group Amnesty International has said that Public Order Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis had been �irresponsible� last week when he denied the allegations before an inquiry had taken place. The group called for a �serious and impartial� investigation.

Online News24, a South African news source, had reported last week that a Greek lawyer claimed seven Pakistani immigrants were abducted and questioned by British agents in Greece following the July 7 bomb attacks in London. Greece's Public Order Ministry denied any involvement in such an incident.

Lawyer Frangiskos Ragoussis reportedly presented Greek lawmakers with a report alleging his clients - who all live in Athens - were interrogated for several days before being released, said News24.

"They were asked whether they had relatives in London, who they were in touch with, what those people's phone numbers were, whether they spoke to them before the bombings and where they lived," Ragoussis told private Skai radio.

Ragoussis said he believed his clients had been questioned by British security officers.

He claimed at least another 20 Pakistanis in other parts of Greece were similarly treated after the London transit bombings, which killed 52 people in addition to the four suspected suicide bombers.

A spokesperson for the 30 000-strong Pakistani community in Greece said the alleged detainees were verbally abused by three men - two of whom spoke to them in English - but were not otherwise harmed.

Javed Aslam, who filed a formal complaint with authorities on July 29 on behalf of the seven people, said the interrogators' main questions concerned phone calls to England.

"All seven were living in the same house. Maybe somebody made a phone call from the house to a friend or relative in England," Aslam said.

Aslam said the complaint had not drawn any official response. "We have had no answer," he said. "We are still waiting."

Ragoussis said he took his report to parliament after Greek prosecutors failed to act on an earlier complaint. "There was a strange, suspicious silence," he said. "So I could not wait longer."

Nikos Voutsis, spokesperson for the small opposition Left Coalition, said his party had raised the issue four times with the government since July.

"It is pathetic that for five months all the Greek authorities have been playing at the game of knowing nothing," Voutsis said.

The Athens Bar Association has offered free legal representation to those Pakistani nationals living in Greece who claim they were abducted and questioned by Greek and British agents.

Americans wary of immigrants: Gallup poll

NEW JERSEY, DEC 16: More Americans are wary of foreigners now than they were prior to Sept 11, a Gallup poll suggests.

However, Asia and Africa are comparatively welcoming of immigrants, but Europe, the Middle East, and Central and South America make it difficult for foreigners to settle.

In the U.S., the most favored destination of migrants, 51 percent said yes to immigrants, and while 44 percent said no. But the proportion of those hostile to foreigners has shot up since a Gallup poll in June 2001, right before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, in which 62 percent said they were for and only 31 percent against.

There are presently 35.2 million foreign-born people living in the U.S. � about 12.1 percent of the population, pushing the percentage of the U.S. population born in other countries to the highest point in nearly 100 years, according to Center for Immigration Studies.

Among French people made wary by recent immigrant riots, 50 percent said they would not welcome immigrants, while only 30 percent would, according to Gallup.

Amid recent racial turmoil in France and Australia and rising concern about immigrants worldwide, Gallup International conducted a survey of 55,000 people in 70 countries to mark the UN's proclamation of Dec. 18 as International Migrant�s Day. It found a global tendency to be wary of outsiders, as some 47 percent of respondents did not want foreigners to immigrate to their countries, while 43 percent did.

However, a substantial majority in Africa (63 percent), Asia (56 percent), and North America (54 percent) felt positively about immigration, while the majority in the Middle East (67 percent), Eastern Europe (61 percent), and Central and South America (53 percent), and some 50 percent in Western Europe were against immigrants.

The countries statistically most favorable to foreign influx were Israel and the Philippines (87 percent), Malaysia (80 percent), Nigeria (76 percent), and Canada (74 percent). The least welcoming was Turkey (7 percent), followed by Bulgaria (10 percent), and countries created after ethnic strife in former Yugoslavia, Serbia-Montenegro (10 percent) and Bosnia-Herzegovina (12 percent). In Korea, 57 percent favored foreign immigrants and 23 percent did not, which is about average for Asian countries.

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