UN gives go-by to Bangladesh worries

Rejecting Bangladesh's concerns over a report on the Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord of 1997 by the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) has adopted it.

In its general segment session ended on July 29 in Geneva, ECOSOC, the parent body of UNPFII, said that it would not delete any paragraph of the report, prepared by a UN rapporteur Lars-Anders Baer on the execution of the accord.

Bangladesh had expressed its concerns in the 10th session of UNPFII in May-end over the forum going beyond its mandate in dealing with the issue of implementation of the CHT accord on the ground that "there are no indigenous peoples in the region".

Bangladesh first secretary to the UN Iqbal Ahmed also raised objections over several points of the report including paragraphs 56 and 58A, which asks the Department of Peacekeeping Operations of the UN to develop a mechanism to strictly monitor and screen the human rights records of national army personnel prior to allowing them to participate in peacekeeping operations.

These paragraphs also recommend that the UN prevent human rights violators and alleged human rights violators in the security forces of Bangladesh.

Foreign minister Dipu Moni on July 26 said that Bangladesh was concerned that the 'tribal' people or ethnic minorities in the CHT region were being described as 'indigenous peoples' of the country.

They were wrongly called 'indigenous peoples' in the two paragraphs of the report, she stressed.

At separate meetings with ambassadors and media editors, she said, "The ethnic minorities in the CHT region have been clearly termed as 'Tribal' in the 1997 peace accord, but there are attempts by some vested quarters to establish them as 'indigenous' in some international and UN forums."

ECOSOC said it would not distinguish between indigenous and tribal groups, as highlighted by the Bangladesh government, or take into account its challenge to the jurisdiction of the forum to deal with the CHT peace accord, a statement by the International Council for the Indigenous Peoples of CHT (ICIP-CHT) said on Sunday.

The UNPFII at the end of its session had called on the Bangladesh government to undertake a 'phased withdrawal' of temporary army camps from the CHT, declare a timeframe for implementation of the peace accord and establish an independent commission to inquire into human rights violations perpetrated against the inhabitants of the region as per the 1997 CHT Peace Accord.

The Bangladesh government gave statements in support of its position, and so did the other fifty-four members of ECOSOC. But as Bangladesh lacked backing from other ECOSOC member-states, it went for a 'compromise.'

Some of the several concerns raised by Bangladesh would be included as 'noted', in the nature of a 'footnote', the statement said quoting the ECOSOC.

Reportedly, only China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia supported some of the concerns raised by Bangladesh. Even though Russia showed some leaning towards Bangladesh's stance, they reiterated the importance of the role of indigenous peoples on the international human rights agenda.

"The region is still heavily militarised and there are reports that the military is carrying out gross violations of indigenous human rights," Lars-Anders Baer said while presenting his study report on the implementation of the CHT Peace Accord 1997.

The former UNPFII member said impunity prevailed in the area and stressed that the violators be brought to the justice.

The peace accord between the then Awami League government and Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samity (PCJSS) ended the decade-long bush war between the local inhabitants and the army.

Of some 500 temporary army camps, 200 had been withdrawn by the governments in phases until 2007, and 34 in August and September last year. The six permanent cantonments are still there.

Dome of the Rock Renovations, 1099-1187

Dome of the Rock

After the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem, the Dome of the Rock became the Templum Domini church, and an altar devoted to St. Nicholas was erected above the Foundation Stone. The rock was surrounded by an iron lattice-work grille, decorated with leaves and branches. The altar was also encompassed by an iron grille on which the date of its creation (1162) was engraved. The two oil candelabra, also made of iron, were placed in the corner southwest of the Foundation Stone, near a lattice-work cell whose function is not known. 

 

Inside the Templum Domini, the Crusaders hung a painting of the presentation of Christ. Accompanying the painting was a rhymed Latin inscription:

The Virgin’s Son, presented here,

Dome of the Rock Crusader Candelabra

The King of Kings, the boy most dear,

He makes this spot a holy place,

And this most rightly is the case.

The ladder Jacob saw was near

The altar he erected here

This memory makes more precious yet

The holy place in which it’s set.

A Crusader account of the Dome of the Rock:

“To the east, below Mt. Calvary, is the Temple of the Lord [the Dome of the Rock], in another part of the city, which was built by Solomon… In the middle of the Temple is a great mount [es-Sakhra] surrounded by walls, in which is the Tabernacle; there also was the Ark of the Covenant which, after the destruction of the Temple, was taken away to Rome by the Emperor Vespasian.”

1170s

The Crusader alterations to the Al-Aqsa Mosque were extensive, but they are very difficult to sort out amid the later rebuildings and restorations. During the early years of Crusader rule, the building languished in a sad state of disrepair. The Templars, however, with their vast revenues from land holdings in Europe and the Levant, began a veritable building boom. A contemporary describes additions made by the knights in the 1170s:

On the other side of the palace, that is on the west, the Templars have built a new house, whose height, length and breadth, and all its cellars and refectories, staircase and roof, are far beyond the custom of this land…. There indeed they have constructed a new Palace, just as on the other side they have the old one. There too they have founded on the edge of the outer court a new church of magnificent size and workmanship.

1187

By the time Saladin captured the city in 1187, Imad ad-Din had described extensive additions to the interior of the Dome of the Rock:

They had adorned it with images and statues, set up dwellings there for monks and made it the place for the Gospel, which they venerated and exalted to the heights. Over the place of the Prophet’s holy foot they set an ornamented tabernacle with columns of marble, marking it as the place where the Messiah had set his foot; a holy and exalted place, where flocks of animals, among which I saw species of pig, were carved in marble.

Wilkinson, John, ed. Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 1099-1185. London: Hakluyt Society, 1988, p. 212, 246, 294.

Gabrieli, Francesco, ed. Arab Historians of the Crusades: Selected and Translated from the Arabic Sources. Berkely: Univ. of California Press, 1969, p. 169.

Cited in Meinhardt, Jack, ed. Crusaders in the Holy Land; The Archaeology of Faith. Washington DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 2005, p. 18-20. 

 

Epigraphy from the Inner Octagonal Arcade of the Dome of the Rock, the oldest known Islamic inscription on the oldest Islamic building; it is located on the Temple Mount, Jerusalem.

“…O People of the Book!
Don’t be excessive in the name of your faith!
Do not say things about God but the truth!
The Messiah Jesus, son of Mary, is indeed a messenger of God:
The Almighty extended a word to Mary,
and a spirit too.

So believe in God and all the messengers,
and stop talking about a Trinity.

Interior of Al-Aksa Mosque

Cease in your own best interests!
Verily God is the God of unity.
Lord Almighty! That God would beget a child?
Either in the Heavens or on the Earth?...”

Nuseibeh, Said, and Oleg Grabar, The Dome of the Rock, Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., New York, 1996.

According to Josias Leslie Porter, in his book Jerusalem, Bethany, and Bethlehem, 1887, p. 48:

The origin of the mosque, as given by Muslem authorities, is interesting. It is as follows. After taking the city, the Khalif Omar asked where the Jewish Temple stood. The Patriarch took him to this rock, then covered with ruins. Omar, with his own hands, helped to remove the rubbish, and gave orders for the erection of the mosque. It is further said that it was rebuilt in a style of greater splendour by Abd el-Melek, who covered it with plates of gold. During the temporary rule of the Crusaders it was converted into a church, and they called it "The Temple of the Lord."

When Jerusalem was captured by the Crusaders in 1099, they converted the Dome of the Rock into a church, calling it the Templum Domini. They added a cross on the dome and iron railings for the protection of the Rock. The al-Aksa Mosque became the residence of the first Latin kings of Jerusalem (Palatium Salomonis), with the addition of a front portico. Subsequently it passed to the Templar Knights who constructed their monastery to the west of the Mosque (today the Islamic Museum).