Taleban releases all S. Korean hostages

Taleban releases all S. Korean hostages
Aug 30, 2007

GHAZNI (Afghanistan) - THE Taleban movement freed three remaining South Korean hostages on Thursday as part of a deal with the Seoul government, said witnesses.
Like the previous 16 captives freed since Wednesday, the two women and a man were handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Ghazni province, from where the Taliban seized 23 South Koreans on July 19.

The two women and one man were covered in dust as they walked out of the desert, accompanied by three armed men, and were turned over to waiting officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross, a reporter at the scene said.

Earlier, Qari Mohammad Bashir said that four people - two male and two female - have been handed over to tribal elders.

They were handed over at an area called Janda, which is about 100km south of the town of Ghazni.

'Three others, all females, will be handed to them in another place on their way back to Ghazni,' Bashir said.

A tribal leader involved in negotiations to free the hostages confirmed that 'three or four' had been handed over to other elders and would be delivered to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

'They are driving towards us,' the elder, Haji Mohammad Zahir, said. He was with an ICRC convoy that had travelled down from Ghazni to collect the hostages.

Twelve other hostages were released in three separate groups on Wednesday after negotiations between the insurgents and South Korean negotiators.

The Taleban captured 23 South Korean hostages on July 19. They shot dead two of them, both male, and freed two women on August 13.

Safety concerns
Prior to the kidnapping, South Korea had warned its citizens not to travel to Afghanistan and blocked many of its growing legion of evangelical Christians from going there due to safety concerns.
The church that sent the Christian volunteers on a bus trip across war-torn southern Afghanistan said the government has told it to help foot the bill for the rescue.

The father of one of two hostages shot dead earlier in the crisis accused church leaders of being 'reckless', while newspapers said the government would suffer diplomatic damage for negotiating directly with the extremists. -- AFP, REUTERS, AP

It is indeed great relief that the nineteen South Korean hostages have been released by the Afghan Taliban en masse, safe and sound, after six weeks of harrowing misadventure in captivity, hopefully returning home appropriately transformed by their traumatic trip to Afghanistan, from which two from their faction will never make it home.

Unfortunate, however, unlikely are hospitable welcomes by their compatriots, many of whom felt their entire nation had been held hostage to the fates of this diminutive faction of puerile evangelists, who thinly obscure their proselytising intents under the fragile mantle of "aid workers".

It was a moral dilemma that South Korea faced: to pay the ransom to save nineteen lives and be the subject of criticism from global community for encouraging similar terrorism-driven abductions, or simply to turn a cold shoulder to its citizens, leaving them in the lurch to be slaughtered at whim and fancy, in the refusal to succumb to the terrorists’ overwhelming grasp.

Either ways, South Korea is in the blame. There is neither a right nor painless option.

With the pressure of public petitioning for the hostages’ lives to be spared, it is difficult and entirely inhumane to ignore the desperate pleas of these entrapped souls. Struggling to strike balance between the international norms and custom and the absolute premise to save the people's lives, the South Korean government have my empathy for their decision to forfeit the ransom fee.

Seoul denies it, but the Taliban’s trumpeting triumph is apparent, having collected ransom money to the tune of more than a million dollars per head for its South Korean hostages, along with scheduled withdrawal of all of South Korea’s non-combat troops in Afghanistan.

Compassion, nevertheless, would translate to financial nourishment for the growth of a powerful anarchic militia, confidence boost in future abductions given the recent success, and elevation of the Taliban insurgents to unprecedented legitimacy, with direct negotiation without reference to the administration of President Hamid Karzai , whose authority is effectively reduced while his chaotic Islam nation reverts to control of the Taliban.
I personally feel the spared missionaries ought to hang their heads in shame and guilt, their obstinate defiance and naivety being the ultimate cause of the tragedy. The irreverent concession is attributed to the utter disregard of their responsibility and accountancy as a citizen of South Korea. Their innocent impudence and audacious contempt of the Islamic religion is unforgivable, causing national and international distress.

As if Afghanistan’s accountancy for approximately ninety-three per cent of the world’s opium production alone is insufficient to provide the Taliban with superfluous arms and supplies needed to escalate its continuing insurgency, the hapless South Koreans may well have pioneered new revenue streams for the Taliban.

Having a microscopic viewpoint of a secondary school student, I may be unaware of other considerations that might be of paramount importance to the above issue.

South Korea must take cognisance of the unwelcome fervour of its nationals seeking to rush in where angels would fear to tread.

(500 words)

Child star wins university place

Child star wins university place
Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/6961865.stmPublished: 2007/08/24 12:23:47 GMT

A nine-year-old maths prodigy has won a place at Hong Kong's Baptist University (HKBU) after gaining two grade As and a B in his A-levels.

He is the youngest ever student to enrol in a university in Hong Kong.

March Tian Boedihardjo told reporters he struggled to communicate academically with his own age group.

March, an Indonesian-Chinese boy resident in Hong Kong, will start his specially designed five-year course at the university in September.

He told reporters that in his spare time he liked "to read books, but on the weekends I like to go out to play with friends".

"We can play games together but academically, we can't communicate," he added.

He said they played chess, Monopoly and cards.

Asked why he was not going to study in the United Kingdom - where his older brother is at Oxford University - he replied in English: "Because my father does not have sufficient money."

March's father said the university had given him confidence it could cope with the demands of teaching a nine-year-old.

"I will advise parents in Hong Kong there's no need to know the IQ of your children. Just try to do your best to nurture them and give them space to develop," Tony Boedihardjo said.

Franklin Luk, president of HKBU, said the decision to admit the boy was based on his excellent examination results and a "commitment to nurturing gifted students".

Dr Tong Chong-sze, Associate Professor of Mathematics at HKBU has arranged several professors to be March's mentors.

"The very first concern of course is - academically can he handle the mathematics at university. So that was the purpose of the first interview and he did very well. He handled himself very well, one against four professors," said Dr Tong.

The admittance of this nine-year-old mathematics prodigy into Hong Kong's Baptist University (HKBU) evinced that no longer is age a limiting factor hampering one’s intellectual development in the modern milieu.

Ostensibly, our current education system has evolved to accommodate talent development. Individuals with exceptional capacity are distinguished and nurtured so as to requite the society with a higher value in the future as a professional – benefiting both the individual and the cultivating community.

By abolishing the age limit hurdle, which stereotypically signifies one’s maturity, a student is enabled to access unbounded knowledge, opening up their horizons from multiplication tables to the possibilities of complex calculus calculation.

With another pebble in the shoe removed, a child with potential can achieve greater distances. Often than not, an precocious child such as Boedihardjo who are set for great achievements is forced to assimilate into the slow-pace curriculum, thereby wasting precious time that can be used to develop his talent instead of revising already-grasped concepts.

A child’s youth is the period of maximum ease of information absorption, when the learning-curve is the steepest and the mind the most malleable. Appropriate utilisation of this timeframe can lead to optimum development for the child.

The debate is whether gifted children should be pushed so far ahead and beyond their physical age.
I personally object to the worry of stunted personal and social development. March, given his young age, possesses the searing curiosity to learn – something that would be nearly impossible in a class of typical nine year-olds. He would face at least two problems if he were to fit in the norms of the education system.

Firstly, he would possibly receive negative attention from his schoolmates (teased or discriminated) for being an anomaly in school. With similar age group yet differing intellect, interactions aiding would be difficult, causing anti-social behaviour instead.

Secondly, boredom might result, causing lost of interest in the subject as well as divulging one’s attention to unconstructive distractions to satisfy his curiosity, having a toll on the individual’s and class’s learning process. One might conclude that work is unnecessary for learning. By extension, complacency might manifest.

However, flexibility of the education system would invite social discontent and jealousy as the disparity of calibre would seem more palpable. Evidently, the education has evolved from inequality (prejudice of female students in the past) to equality. Yet, ironically, we are moving back to inequality.

Hence, we must empathise with the lower rungs of the social ladder for they ultimately make up the majority, bearing in mind exceptional cases are uncommon. I feel while possibilities are explored, we must not neglect the mainstream education. Rare geniuses are but bonuses to the social construct of our community.

I understand that I am in no position to discuss the issue for I am neither a prodigy nor an accomplished educationalist. With the microscopic perspective of a secondary student, I am aware of assumed responses of a prodigy in the alternative case in my argument, which might lead to biasness.

(500 words)