Saudi cleric slammed over fatwa on women cashiers

The Jakarta Post, Associated Press, Riyadh | Thu, 08/26/2010 10:30 PM

A conservative Saudi cleric was told to stop giving unauthorized edicts after he called for a boycott of a supermarket chain that employs women as cashiers, the office of the kingdom's most senior religious leader said Thursday.

The move is the first public reprimand of a prominent cleric following a royal decree that limits the issuance of fatwas to the country's most senior group of clerics. Fatwas are religious edicts that provide guidance in matters of everyday life to pious Muslims.

Sheik Youssef al-Ahmed had urged people not to shop at Panda Supermarket because women there work in jobs that allow for the mingling of the sexes, which the cleric said was a violation of Islamic law.

Saudi media reported that al-Ahmed's fatwa forced the supermarket management to reassign 11 of its women employees to other positions on Wednesday. The chain could not be reached for comment.

Grand Mufti Sheik Abdul-Aziz Al Sheik's office said Thursday he had summoned al-Ahmed and ordered the cleric to refrain from issuing unauthorized fatwas.

The office said it "received a pledge from al-Ahmed not to issue any fatwas" without approval.

Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Islam and religious leaders have strong influence over policy making and social mores. Sexes are segregated in schools and public places. Women are not allowed to drive or vote, and physical education classes are banned in state-run girls' schools.

Saudi King Abdullah has been trying to clamp down on ultraconservative ideology, including allowing women to take up commercial jobs.

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Saudi couple "hammer 24 nails" into Sri Lankan maid

Reuters, COLOMBO | Thu Aug 26, 2010 6:50am EDT

An x-ray shows nails in a hand of L.T. Ariyawathi, 49, who returned to Sri Lanka after 5 months as a maid in Saudi Arabia, in a hospital in Matara, 160 km (100 miles) south of Colombo, August 26, 2010. A Saudi couple tortured Ariyawathi after she complained of a too heavy workload by hammering 24 nails into her hands, legs and forehead, officials said on Thursday. Nearly 2 million Sri Lankans sought employment overseas last year and around 1.4 million, mostly maids, were employed in the Middle East. Many have complained of physical abuse or harassment. (Credit: Reuters/Stringer)

(Reuters) - A Saudi couple tortured their Sri Lankan maid after she complained of a too heavy workload by hammering 24 nails into her hands, legs and forehead, officials said on Thursday.

Nearly 2 million Sri Lankans sought employment overseas last year and around 1.4 million, mostly maids, were employed in the Middle East. Many have complained of physical abuse or harassment.

L.T. Ariyawathi, a 49-year old mother of three, returned on Friday after five months in Saudi Arabia.

Her family only realized what had happened to her when she complained of pain and they took her to see the doctor, Foreign Employment Bureau officials said.

"The landlord and the wife of the landlord hammered 24 nails into her when she complained of the heavy workload," Kalyana Priya Ramanayake, media secretary of the Foreign Employment Bureau, told Reuters.

Ariyawathi has been taken to hospital for surgery to remove the nails, which according to the maid were hammered in when they were hot.

X-rays showed one- to two-inch nails in her hands and legs, with one over her eyes, officials said.

The Foreign Employment Bureau is consulting the Attorney-General while the Sri Lankan External Affairs Ministry is to take the matter up with the Saudi government, officials said.

(Reporting by Ranga Sirilal; Writing by Shihar Aneez; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Victim: LT Ariyawathi, left, is treated in a hospital in Sri Lanka yesterday after complaining that her Saudi Arabian employers had hammered 24 hot nails into her body (Photo: Daily Mail)

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Chinese bestseller slams Goldman Sachs for crisis

Yahoo News, By ELAINE KURTENBACH, AP Business Writer – Wed Aug 25, 2:07 am ET

SHANGHAI – Goldman Sachs & Co., reviled in the U.S. for its role in the financial crisis, is now getting hammered in the world's No. 2 economy with a sensationalist new book accusing the investment bank of trying to destroy China.

The "Goldman Sachs Conspiracy," which has sold over 100,000 copies since it was released in June, reaching popular website Sina.com's top-10 list, follows another by author Li Delin, "Eliminate All Competitors — How Goldman Sachs Wins Over the World," published last year.

Li, a financial journalist, appears to have hit pay dirt among Chinese readers with an appetite for the would-be exposes that get prominent display in downtown bookstores, such as "Who Killed Toyota: the Truth ofAmerica's Attack" and "Currency War."

The nearly 300-page, highly dramatized account covers much of the same ground as a widely cited piece by Matt Taibbi last year in the Rolling Stone magazine that portrayed the Wall Street institution as a "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."

Li's book takes ample license in its attacks on Goldman Sachs. The company's ultimate goal, he says in the first chapter, is to "kill China."

"Like a fox chewing a bone, Goldman Sachs knows the rules of the game and when to go for your neck," it says.

With the "cruel character of a Manchurian tiger, the group creeps around the world, like a veteran hunter stalking its prey, when it smells blood it pounces!" the chapter says.

Goldman Sachs' office in Beijing refused to comment on the book and on others of its ilk.

The financial cataclysm of 2008 and ensuing global recession has resulted in a profusion of books dissecting the role of global investment banks including Goldman Sachs.

"It reads like a novel, rather than a real story," said Peng Yunliang, a securities analyst.

"Goldman Sachs has been at the eye of the storm and is seen as the culprit behind the mess. That's clearly the most popular topic on the market," he said.

Goldman was sharply criticized, especially in the U.S., for its high executive pay after it accepted a $10 billion government bailout during the financial crisis. It also received $13 billion from insurer American International Group Inc. after the government bailed that company out. The bank recently agreed to a record settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over civil fraud charges.

In China, the company's business appears to have weathered well the market chaos elsewhere. The investment bank was an underwriter in the recent record-breaking $22.1 billion initial public offering by the Agricultural Bank of China, among other big deals.

Goldman also saw handsome gains from a $4.9 million investment in 2007 in a 12.5 percent stake in drug maker Shenzhen Hepalink, which later raised about $864 million in an IPO that catapulted the company's little-known founders to become, at least on paper, the richest couple in China.

Li, in an online chat, said the book was no exaggeration.

"The real financial battle is even more dramatic than my book, according to my knowledge of the markets," he said. "Goldman Sachs is the hand behind the financial crisis, maybe even its cause." He soon plans to publish a third book about the company.

The conspiracy genre and dramatized accounts of scandals are popular in China, as in many markets. China's government exerts strong control over the news media and broadcasters, but the book publishing industry has a bit freer leeway for commentary, particularly when the targets are not Communist Party officials.

The Chinese-language book also accuses Goldman Sachs of involvement in the recent Dubai and Greek debt debacles and the wider European financial and fiscal crises.

To buttress its myriad allegations, the book notes well-known links between former top Goldman Sachs executives, such as former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and government officials in America and other countries.

It also includes copies of what appear to be U.S. court documents. They include a complaint against Goldman Sachs and Fabrice Tourre, a Goldman vice president accused of shepherding a deal at the center of SEC charges that the company sold mortgage securities without telling buyers that they had been created with input from a client that was betting on them to fail.

Last month, a U.S. federal judge approved a settlement calling for Goldman Sachs & Co. to pay $550 million to settle civil fraud charges that the Wall Street giant misled buyers of mortgage-related investments. In the settlement, Goldman acknowledged that its marketing materials for the deal omitted important information for buyers.

The penalty was the largest against a Wall Street firm in SEC history. But the settlement amounts to less than 5 percent of Goldman's 2009 net income of $12.2 billion after payment of dividends to preferred shareholders — or a little more than two weeks of net income.

Associated Press researcher Ji Chen contributed to this report.

Traders are seen working by the Goldman Sachs kiosk on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, April 26, 2010. Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid

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Malaysia ‘Out of Patience’ after Indonesia Protests

Jakarta Globe | August 25, 2010

Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman says it has run out of patience regarding protests in Indonesia after a demonstration triggered by a maritime dispute saw human feces flung at its embassy in Jakarta.

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Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia said on Wednesday that it had run out of patience and sent a protest letter to Indonesia after a demonstration triggered by a maritime dispute saw human feces flung at its embassy in Jakarta.

Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said he had spoken to his Indonesian counterpart, Marty Natalegawa, and sent a protest note to its embassy over the detention of seven Malaysian fishermen by Indonesian maritime officials in disputed waters.

He said the note also objected to the rowdy protest at the Malaysian mission in Jakarta on Monday and reported threats by a nationalist group there to “clear” Malaysians from the country.

“I don’t think we would encourage such activities in Malaysia ... we would stop Malaysians from doing so if they did,” Anifah told a press conference.

“[Indonesia] has its own internal political problems but we don’t want Malaysia to end up being the victim.

“They seek our understanding while solving problems internally, to assist them not to make this issue worse,” he said. “But in helping them, we should not lose out ... we have come to a point where it’s now beyond our patience.”

The protests broke out after three Indonesian maritime officers were detained by Malaysian authorities in disputed waters a week ago, and later released.

Accounts of the incident are in dispute, but the seven Malaysian fishermen were detained a week ago in waters off southern Malaysia by Indonesian authorities who accused them of encroaching into their waters.

Three of the Indonesian officials were detained by Malaysian maritime authorities who intercepted the group as they were being taken back to Indonesia.

All those involved have now been released.

Anifah said the latest spat between the neighbors, who have a history of squabbles, was a result of their ill-defined maritime borders and that although a committee had been set up on the issue, there was still no solution.

“Even if you have a defined boundary, there will be times when Indonesia is going to encroach in our waters whether intentionally or not and vice versa,” he said.

“So the issue here is while we have to define our boundaries clearly to determine who is right, who is wrong, but at the same time we must manage this crisis because we are neighbors.

“What is happening today does not bring us any happiness.”

Marty, meanwhile, appeared before the House of Representatives on Wednesday, saying the expulsion of the Malaysian ambassador to Indonesia, a move demanded by some legislators, would be an extreme measure.

“It would have a hard impact but the problems will always be there: illegal logging, migrant workers, border issues, trafficking etc,” Marty said.

Though asked legislators to consider their proposal seriously.

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Hong Kong angry, sad at handling of Manila siege

CNN News, By Greg Hughes and Kevin Voigt, August 24, 2010)

A news agent hands out free newspapers in Hong Kong on Tuesday with headlines and photos about the bus hijacking crisis in Manila the previous day.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Hong Kong leader expresses "disappointment" in the handling of the crisis
• Hong Kong residents question the "indecisiveness" of Manila police in storming the gunman
• Hong Kong government sends black signal warning to "avoid all travel" to the Philippines
• Hong Kong's Filipino community fear anger at Manila's handling of crisis could cause a backlash

Hong Kong, China (CNN) -- The hostage crisis in Manila that left eight Hong Kong tourists dead has generated sorrow and anger as well as raised many questions over the handling of the situation by the Filipino authorities.

"This is a serious blow to Hong Kong people. We all feel very devastated," Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang told a press conference Tuesday, saying that the government would soon announce community mourning events.

In local media, under the headline "Tsang slams siege tactics," the South China Morning Post highlighted Donald Tsang's "disappointment" over the handling of the crisis, reporting that he was close to tears during a press conference.

The Standard reported that "hundreds of Hong Kong residents expressed disbelief and disappointment in discussion forums and on Facebook, saying the police officers were overcautious, if not slow, to storm the bus."

"Is there only one ax in the Philippines?" "Why didn't the police shoot the gunman earlier?" said one comment posted in a forum, The Standard reported.

Another Facebook page asked people to wear black on Tuesday to mourn the dead.

An editorial in The Standard also questioned the approach of the rescue operation, noting that an "entire hour" passed from the time the police tried to break into the bus to the time the gunman was declared dead.

Joesph Tung, executive director of the Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong, said: "Watching on the live broadcast, a lot of people here in Hong Kong are very much furious about the action from the Philippine police."

With Hong Kong residents watching the events unfold live with the rest of the world, its bloody conclusion has ratcheted frustrations with the Philippine government.

"As we were watching this, in the beginning it seemed his demands were very simple and everything was very easy going ... you never thought it would come out like this," Tung said.

The Hong Kong government put up a black signal warning to "avoid all travel" to the Philippines, its most severe warning.

The last time Hong Kong issued a black alert was for travel to Bangkok during violent protests there earlier this year, Tung said.

There are currently three other tour groups from Hong Kong traveling in the Philippines with about 60 people, Tung said. All are expected to return home Tuesday.

Tung thinks the bloodshed will undoubtedly hurt Hong Kong travel to the Philippines, where the beaches of Cebu are especially popular for local travelers.

On Tuesday, members of the local Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) political party held a protest at the Consulate General of the Philippines, chanting: "We protest against the police. There rescue efforts were incompetent."

There were fears among the Filipino community in Hong Kong that anger at Manila's handling of the hostage drama could cause a backlash against those living in Hong Kong.

"We have to make clear our position on the issue; that this is not something about Filipinos against Chinese or Chinese against Filipinos," said Eman Villanueva, executive director of United Filipinos in Hong Kong, an umbrella group that represents migrants working in the southern Chinese enclave.

About 150,000 Filipinos live and work in Hong Kong, the majority of which are employed as domestic helpers, said Villanueva.

"The United Filipinos in Hong Kong condoles with the families in Hong Kong of those who died and sympathizes with the other victims who got out safely but were surely traumatized by the tragic event of the past hours," the group said in a statement.

"Filipino migrant workers in Hong Kong are appalled by this crime and greatly saddened by its ending."

Some employers have told Filipino workers to stay at home today to avoid any potential conflicts, Villanueva said, but his group has not received any reports of actions against Philippine nationals working in Hong Kong.

Police start charging the bus in Manila, Philippines, after a former police officer took a group of tourists hostage.

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How Fox News Betrayed its Own Favorite War

Jakarta Globe, Frank Rich, The New York Times, August 22, 2010

The “ground zero mosque,” as you may well know by now, is not at ground zero. It’s not a mosque but an Islamic cultural center containing a prayer room. It’s not going to determine President Obama’s political future or the elections of 2010 or 2012. Still, the battle that has broken out over this project in Lower Manhattan will prove eventful all the same. And the consequences will be far more profound than any midterm election results or any of the grand debates now raging 24/7 over the parameters of tolerance, religious freedom, and the real-estate gospel of location, location, location.

Here’s what’s been lost in all the screaming. The prime movers in the campaign against the “ground zero mosque” just happen to be among the last cheerleaders for America’s nine-year war in Afghanistan. The wrecking ball they’re wielding is not merely pounding Park51, as the project is known, but is demolishing America’s already frail support for that war, which is dedicated to nation-building in a nation whose most conspicuous asset besides opium is actual mosques.

So virulent is the Islamophobic hysteria of the neocon and Fox News right — abetted by the useful idiocy of the Anti-Defamation League, Harry Reid and other cowed Democrats — that it has also rendered Gen. David Petraeus’s last-ditch counterinsurgency strategy for fighting the war inoperative. How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York?

You’d think that American hawks invested in the Afghanistan “surge” would not act against their own professed interests. But they couldn’t stop themselves from placing cynical domestic politics over country. The ginned-up rage over the “ground zero mosque” was not motivated by a serious desire to protect America from the real threat of terrorists lurking at home and abroad — a threat this furor has in all likelihood exacerbated — but by the potential short-term rewards of winning votes by pandering to fear during an election season.

In the five months after The Times’s initial account there were no newspaper articles on the project at all. It was only in May of this year that the Rupert Murdoch axis of demagoguery revved up for a New York Post jihad. The paper’s inspiration was a rabidly anti-Islam blogger best known for claiming that Obama was Malcolm X’s illegitimate son. Soon the rest of the Murdoch empire and its political allies piled on, promoting the incendiary libel that the “radical Islamists” behind the “ground zero mosque” were tantamount either to neo-Nazis in Skokie (according to a Wall Street Journal columnist) or actual Nazis (per Newt Gingrich).

At the Islamophobia command center, Murdoch’s News Corporation, the hypocrisy is thick on the ground. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial darkly cited unspecified “reports” that Park51 has “money coming from Saudi charities or Gulf princes that also fund Wahabi madrassas.” As Jon Stewart observed, this brand of innuendo could also be applied to News Corp., whose second largest shareholder after the Murdoch family is a member of the Saudi royal family. Perhaps last week’s revelation that News Corp. has poured $1 million into G.O.P. campaign coffers was a fiendishly clever smokescreen to deflect anyone from following the far greater sum of Saudi money (a $3 billion stake) that has flowed into Murdoch enterprises, or the News Corp. money (at least $70 million) recently invested in a Saudi media company.

Were McCain in the White House, Fox and friends would have kept ignoring Park51. But it’s an irresistible target in our current election year because it revives the most insidious anti-Obama narrative of the many Fox promoted in the previous election year: Obama the closet Muslim and secret madrassa alumnus. In the much-discussed latest Pew poll, a record number of Americans (nearing 20 percent) said that our Christian president practices Islam. And they do not see that as a good thing. Existing or proposed American mosques hundreds and even thousands of miles from ground zero, from Tennessee to Wisconsin to California, are now under siege.

After 9/11, President Bush praised Islam as a religion of peace and asked for tolerance for Muslims not necessarily because he was a humanitarian or knew much about Islam but because national security demanded it. An America at war with Islam plays right into Al Qaeda’s recruitment spiel. This month’s incessant and indiscriminate orgy of Muslim-bashing is a national security disaster for that reason — Osama bin Laden’s “next video script has just written itself,” as the former F.B.I. terrorist interrogator Ali Soufan put it — but not just for that reason. America’s Muslim partners, those our troops are fighting and dying for, are collateral damage. If the cleric behind Park51 — a man who has participated in events with Condoleezza Rice and Karen Hughes, for heaven’s sake — is labeled a closet terrorist sympathizer and a Nazi by some of the loudest and most powerful conservative voices in America, which Muslims are not?

In the latest CNN poll, American opposition is at an all-time high to both the ostensibly concluded war in Iraq (69 percent) and the endless one in Afghanistan (62 percent). Now, when the very same politicians and pundits who urge infinite patience for Afghanistan slime Muslims as Nazis, they will have to explain that they are not talking about Hamid Karzai or his corrupt narco-thug government or the questionably loyal Afghan armed forces our own forces are asked to entrust with their lives. The hawks will have to make the case that American troops should make the ultimate sacrifice to build a Nazi — Afghan, I mean — nation and that economically depressed taxpayers at home should keep paying for it. Good luck with that.

Frank Rich is a New York Times columnist.

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China Premier Wen calls for political reform: report

Reuters, BEIJING | Sun Aug 22, 2010 1:12am EDT

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao stands waiting to greet visiting New Zealand Prime Minister John Key before their meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in this July 7, 2010 file photo. (Credit: Reuters/Alexander F. Yuan/Pool)

(Reuters) - China has to pursue political reform to safeguard its economic health, Premier Wen Jiabao said during a visit to the booming town of Shenzhen, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Wen's call for political reform lacked specifics. But his comments reflect broader worries that unless the Party embraces at least limited reforms to make officials more answerable, then corruption and abuses may erode the country's economic prospects.

"Without the safeguarding of political restructuring, China may lose what it has already achieved through economic restructuring and the targets of its modernization drive might not be reached," Wen was quoted by Xinhua as saying.

"People's democratic rights and legitimate rights must be guaranteed. People should be mobilized and organized to deal with, in accordance with the law, state, economic, social and cultural affairs," Wen added.

Wen also wants to "create conditions" to allow the people to criticize and supervise the government as a way to address "the problem of over-concentration of power with ineffective supervision."

Wen has developed a reputation as the member of China's ruling Communist Party leadership most sympathetic to relaxing some of the country's top-down controls.

Wen will retire as premier in early 2013. He has used recent speeches and comments to indicate that he wants to spend his final years in office focused on improving social welfare, promoting more balanced and equitable economic growth, and addressing public discontent with government.

In Shenzhen, a small village that exploded into a city of 14 million people in the last three decade, Wen said the Shenzhen story showed that reforming and opening up to the outside world "is the only road to achieving national prosperity and the people's happiness."

"Regression and stagnation will not only end the achievements of the three-decade old reform and opening-up drive and the rare opportunity of development, but also suffocate the vitality of China's socialist cause with her own characteristics," the premier added.

(Reporting by Chris Buckley, editing by Miral Fahmy)

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Former high-flying UN diplomat Shashi Tharoor weds

RNW, 22 August 2010 - 9:25am

Former UN diplomat Shashi Tharoor married girlfriend Sunanda Pushkar Sunday, months after the couple were the focus of a cricket team ownership scandal that saw him quit the Indian government.

Former high-flying UN diplomat
Shashi Tharoor weds AFP/RNW

The couple were married in the presence of close relatives in Tharoor's ancestral home in the southern state of Kerala, a witness said.

The suave, debonair Tharoor, who spent almost three decades in the United Nations before quitting in 2007, was elected to the Indian parliament in 2009.

He was made junior foreign minister but had served barely a year before he was forced to resign over revelations that Pushkar had been given a free stake in a new Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket franchise.

Tharoor helped put together the consortium that bought the team in Kerala, and opposition politicians suggested the free stake was a kickback for his "services".

Tharoor staunchly denied any wrongdoing and said he was stepping down with a "clear conscience" to avoid any embarrassment for the government.

The revelation of Pushkar's free stake was leaked on the microblogging site Twitter by the then IPL chief Lalit Modi.

The move backfired, with the finance ministry launching a wide-ranging tax probe into the IPL and its franchise owners.

Modi was suspended and is now the focus of an inquiry into allegations of corruption, indiscipline and money-laundering in the IPL.

Growing problem of abandoned babies in Malaysia

BBC News, By Jennifer Pak, Kuala Lumpur, 21 August 2010

Sixty-five infants have been found so far this year, and many were dead by the time they were discovered.

Malaysian authorities are grappling with
a growing problem of abandoned babies.

The government fears that number will surpass previous totals - an average of 100 babies are found each year.

They were left in rubbish bins, on doorsteps and on the streets, prompting the government to consider treating cases as murder or attempted murder.

The latest abandoned baby, a newborn infant, was found dumped by a riverside, covered in a towel and a piece of cloth and stuffed into a bag.

The issue has touched a raw nerve in the Muslim-majority country.

Tougher penalties sought

On Sunday. the opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) was due to meet non-government organisations and other political parties to discuss ways to solve the problem.

The gruesome finds have encouraged some observers to point the finger at familiar targets: internet pornography, bad parenting, and an over-exposure to sexually liberal western culture.

But the phenomenon has also revived a debate over sex education in schools in a country where young people are taught abstinence, and where having a child out of wedlock is seen as deeply shameful.

Social workers say this attitude simply drives many desperate women to abandon their babies.

But there have been other approaches. One charity recently opened the country's first "baby hatch" - a place where mothers can safely and anonymously leave their unwanted child.

The southern state of Malacca believes the way to curb the problem is to allow Muslim girls under the age of 16 to marry; it has also proposed opening a school for pregnant teenagers.

But human rights groups have denounced this as a "knee-jerk reaction".

It is proving difficult to find a solution that everyone agrees on. But PAS hopes to achieve results by involving different groups in the discussion.

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Vedanta's India mine plan skewered by official report

BBC News, 17 August 2010 Last updated at 10:07 GMT

UK mining group Vedanta should not be given permission for a bauxite mine in the east Indian state of Orissa, a government report has found.

The tribes says the mining project will destroy
their livelihood

Allowing mining in the proposed area would deprive two tribes of their rights, says the report commissioned by India's environment minister.

Vedanta's plans to extract bauxite from a hill revered by a tribal community have caused controversy.

Vedanta said it would abide by a final government decision.

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said the report would be considered by the Forest Advisory Committee on 20 August, after which he would rule on the plan.

Final nail in coffin?

The four-member panel, which investigated alleged violations of environmental laws by Vedanta in Orissa's Kalahandi district, gave its report to the ministry on Monday.

It said allowing mining in the area would not be a good idea.

The BBC's Geeta Pandey in Delhi says it is unlikely the environment minister will go against the finding.

The report said: "The committee is of the firm view that allowing mining in the proposed mining lease area by depriving two primitive tribal groups - Kutia and Dongaria Kondh - of their rights over the proposed mining site in order to benefit a private company (Vedanta) would shake the faith of tribal people in the laws of the land."

It concluded the mine would destroy some 7 sq km (2.7 sq miles) of forest land and threaten the tribe's survival.

The findings also accused the company of illegally occupying forest land with the alleged collusion of local officials, despite not getting government clearance for its project.

Vedanta said it would abide by the government decision.

"We are law abiding people. We will not start mining at all until and unless we get 100% clearance from the authorities concerned," chairman Anil Agarwal said.

The Dongria Kondh say the mining project will destroy a major part of the Niyamgiri hill, which they consider sacred and a source of livelihood.

Campaign group Survival International said it hoped the report would be the "final nail in the coffin for Vedanta's plans".

"This report is utterly scathing about Vedanta's behaviour and confirms what Survival and others have been saying for years," director Stephen Corry said.

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