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Those detained were identified as Sohail Abdul Aziz Nizami, Ayub Qadir, Sajid Qadir, Yusuf Haji Ghaffar Memon, Nur Mohammed Batliwala, Shakeel Usman Chotani, Ayub Khan, Ehsan Farooqi, Ghulam Mustafa, Mohammed Yusuf, Mohammed Imran and Mohammed Iqbal Batliwala.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->I think the 12 should sue the airline and the Nitin Patel guy for slander. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Why to sue airline? When 12 were not following instructions. There is a reason to shut electronics during take off and landing.
Some Indians have dada-giri/gunda gardi habbits and good they got a very nice lesson.
Link
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The 12 Indians, travelling by a US airliner and <b>arrested in The Netherlands, have been charged with disruption of flight</b>, government said on Thursday night.
"The information we received says that they have been arrested for flight disruption and not terrorist acts," Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma said.
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<!--QuoteBegin-Mudy+Aug 25 2006, 02:12 AM-->QUOTE(Mudy @ Aug 25 2006, 02:12 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Link
<!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The 12 Indians, travelling by a US airliner and <b>arrested in The Netherlands, have been charged with disruption of flight</b>, government said on Thursday night.
"The information we received says that they have been arrested for flight disruption and not terrorist acts," Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma said.
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INDIANS ?
Think Not. Were the wearing Indian, talking Indian,Indian names,Indian cutoms ? 12 Muslims living in India were causing disturbance with their Paki behaviour got them arrested. Parapatar dont make one Indian.
Bizzare behavior. In my recent flight from Hyd'bad to Frankfurt on Lufthansa, two Indians did just that. Whipped out cell phones and tried to trade sears when the plane was about to take off. They got yelled at, and they sat down. Imagine 12 of such bozos - muslims or not, behaving badly, even I would have kicked them or something <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> They got what they deserved. NW is not run by Mulayam Singh yadav, thank goodness.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Indians who disgrace India </b>
Pioneer.com
Sunanda K Datta-Ray
From swatting flies to crushing protesters under tanks, the Chinese Government holds a world record in disciplining people. The means and ends are not to everyone's liking but flying back from Bangkok the other day, I could understand why 12 Chinese will never be hauled off an aircraft, manhandled, handcuffed, detained and questioned. I must also add that whatever the provocation, no Western authority would dare to treat Chinese citizens so roughly.
My ordeal began at Bangkok airport when the man sitting next to me raised his arms over his head and kept them there. A few inches from my nose, his armpit stank. He was a well-dressed passenger booked on the same Thai flight to Kolkata.
It used to be an empty plane but for a few demure chokras going to Bangkok without luggage and returning laden with cheap contraband. Nowadays, it's packed with noisily assertive passengers. With Stinking Armpit mercifully across the aisle, I read of China's latest campaign to stop "uncouth" Chinese going abroad.
According to China Daily, they spit, clear their throats loudly, shout into mobile phones and take off their shoes in planes. Since such "behaviour is not compatible with the nation's economic strength and growing international status," the Communist Party's Spiritual Civilisation Steering Committee will re-educate tourists.
I wish Indians were as moved by pride or sensitivity. This has nothing to do with ethnic profiling or terrorist alarms. But, paradoxically, one experiences India at its worst on flights abroad. The logical corollary to Malcolm Muggeridge's claim that the only Englishmen left in the world are Indians is that the only Indians lurk in a time warp in Silicon Valley or Southall. The 12 Mumbai textile traders were not Non-Resident Indians. But whether NRIs, People of Indian Origin, plain desis, manual workers and professionals, all share common traits that are as offensive as anything China Daily complains of.
It's not only a cattle class problem. Since Air India automatically upgrades Government officials, politicians and anyone with clout, the same culture dominates business and first class cabins.
Indians used to be diffident abroad, especially in the West, when we feared snubs. Khushwant Singh's advice when I was taking up a posting in London soon after Enoch Powell's outburst in the late sixties was to "haw-haw it out" at Heathrow. Just back from England then, Neena Vyas, daughter of the veteran editor Shyam Lal and herself a journalist, said she had avoided unpleasantness only by claiming to work for the "Indian embassy." Visiting America's Deep South a decade earlier, Mohie Das, highly Anglicised first Indian head of Mackinnon Mackenzie, carried a turban to clamp on his head when entering restaurants. Maharajahs escaped discrimination.
If colour prejudice forced Indians to exercise restraint, confidence has opened the floodgates of boisterousness. Paul Theroux says anyone who sits next to an Indian on a plane can vouch for national loquacity. Film star Amisha Patel's reported tantrum at Mumbai airport recalled Indian's counter at Changi when the airline still connected Singapore and Kolkata. Passengers who queued quietly for Singapore Airlines bunched round Indian's desk, waving tickets and passports, pushing and shoving. An extension of home, the airline allowed Indians to be Indian.
Freed from inhibition, our Johnny-know-alls go wild on the perks of flying. They treat the crew as personal servants, peremptorily demand drinks before take-off, complain about the food, call loudly for magazines, headsets and blankets, ignore Fasten Seat-belt signs, chatter on their mobiles, constantly open overhead lockers, and parade the aisles forcing meal trolleys to retreat. Bathrooms are a filthy mess in their wake. Only the scowling surliness of Aeroflot's male stewards keep them silent in their seats.
Such is the level of English of many flyers that I heard a Royal Brunei hostess warn another, "They don't understand 'vegetarian'. You must say 'aloo-gobi'!" I have filled in landing cards for countless passengers who produce their passports when asked for name and address, but never for an unlettered qualified surgeon, as Tapan Raychowdhury, the Oxford historian, had to do. Though with a surgery degree from some Uttar Pradesh university, the woman who sought his help called the entire British Isles - including Dublin where she was joining her doctor husband - "London."
Airlines understand their traffic. Emirates service improves miraculously after Dubai. For Lufthansa, it's Frankfurt. Ask for a martini on an eastern Air India flight and the steward will explain politely that cocktails are served only on Western routes. It's raw spirits in the East. A steward on Indian's early morning Bangkok-Kolkata flight used to walk down the aisle with an open bottle of Black Label, pouring out generous libations. Passengers complained if he didn't.
Drink can be demeaning. Though the Qantas hostess snapped that the bar was closed for landing, a Mumbai- Cairns passenger kept pleading for free champagne because he had never before been upgraded. London is the worst route. North Indian field hands who have acquired an insatiable appetite for whisky and a raucous bonhomie when reborn as British factory workers invite the superciliousness of British Airways crews with little other experience of Indians. A Britindian hostess stopped at a row of noisy drinkers once to say in heavily accented Hindi that they made her feel ashamed of being Indian.
Despite personal crudities, Chinese flyers are less demanding. Not feeling quite as deprived at home, they don't throw their weight about abroad. Many Westerners claim that China is a more serious nation, less given to distractions. If Beijing would not take what happened in Amsterdam lying down, it would also ensure that its citizens do not invite insult.
China's second cultural revolution will last till the end of 2008 when it will host the Summer Olympics. According to official statistics, Chinese tourists last year made 31 million foreign and 1.2 billion domestic trips. They are expected to make 100 million overseas trips by 2020.
Indians might make even more. I wish instead of exhorting us to welcome foreigners as honoured guests, Jawaharlal Nehru had insisted on a compulsory crash course in manners (like P Forms, income tax clearance and other forgotten nightmares) before going abroad. Realising cultural deficiencies, he laid down deportment rules for official entertainment and civil service trainees; let his successors start with textile delegations from Mumbai. My having to suffer Stinking Armpit doesn't matter. The national image does.
(sunanda.dattaray@gmail.com)
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Conform or fly jihad Air </b>
Prafull Goradia
Pioneer.com
<b>It's time Muslims looked at passenger profiling positively, in the interest of a safer world </b>
By lodging a protest with the Dutch Government over what happened on flight NW 0042 on August 23, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has made Indians of all genres possible suspects and therefore unwanted in the future. The MEA postures as if India has neither produced terrorists nor is wanting in experience in their barbarism. <b>The Indian Government overlooked that every country in the world does not share the mentality that caused our own Foreign Minister to accompany three terrorists in a plane to Kandahar</b>. Northwest Airlines as well as the Dutch Government had every reason to take abundant precaution. It was an expensive precaution in terms of money and time lost in flight disruption, as well as goodwill lost. All these costs far outweigh the inconvenience caused to the 12 irresponsible Indians. Now, by alleging "racial profiling", the MEA has added blunder to bloomer. A country cannot aspire to be a great power and at the same time carry such a baggage of inferiority on its sleeve.
Why did Northwest Airlines sell tickets to doubtful passengers? This is the question uppermost in the minds of all right-thinking air travellers. True, there have been any number of hijacks in the past. But after jihad was declared on 9/11, the airlines have no business to sell tickets to all and sundry. Once a hijacker or two boards an aircraft, it is difficult to prevent a mishap. That experience led to the introduction of a security check on every passenger before he boards. Instruments were introduced, handbags began to be screened and later check-in baggage also went under the scanner. But even after all this, hijackings couldn't be prevented.
The biggest success achieved by any Government in preventing a terror strike was the British authorities blowing of the plan to plant liquid bombs in a dozen aircraft in mid-August. After this, the hardening of stance was inevitable. The obvious - which was somehow avoided all these years - was taken up. It was decided to check the antecedents of a buyer before selling him an air ticket. Since terrorism today is largely a monopoly (with notable exceptions in a few pockets around the world) of jihadis, the policy of all secular airlines should be to avoid these people.
A suggestion has been made in Britain that all its law abiding Muslim citizens should be issued pink cards so that they can be treated like normal citizens and serviced easily at shops, trains, buses and airports. Those who don't qualify would have to depend on the discretion of the authorities. Some people have come up with an idea for having a separate airline exclusively for Muslims - Jahaaz-ul-Islam is the provocative name given. This should not be confused with apartheid. The South Africans segregated on the basis of colour and reserved 80 per cent of lands for people with white skin. But this suggestion is merely to induce law abiding citizens to actively volunteer in the war against their violent brethren.
There are terrorists in Japan. The Tamil Tigers are well known. JVP rebels had terrorised Sri Lanka and memories of the Khalistanis are still fresh. The ULFA and the Naxalities are often more ferocious than the jihadis. All these groups must be treated with the same ruthlessness that is deserved by the Islamists.
The jihadis, however, stand out in several ways. They enjoy near monopoly in the business of plane hijacking ever since they took an El Al plane to Entebbe airport in Uganda. Their activities have spared no one, even the Australians have targeted. The world map of jihad includes Sydney, Bali, Jakarta, southern Philippines where a secessionist movement is being sponsored by them, Xinjiang province in China, the Thai region of Pattani, Sudan, Chechnya, what to talk of West Asia, India and Europe. Spain was sufficiently tormented by Islamists to withdraw its troops from Iraq. In short, jihad has covered all five continents.
In order to combat this huge killer machine, Governments should be ruthless and unhindered by spurious political correctness. No Government should restrain its administration or its law enforcement agencies in the mission to defeat international jihad. This message is all important to the Indian Government.
Even the law-abiding sections have their problems, Islam is believed to be a divine entity whose eternal message is to attain a majority among all humanity before doomsday. In Mishkatu'l Masabih, book xiii, Chapter 1, Prophet Mohammed had exhorted his followers to marry women who will love their husbands and be very prolific, "for I wish you to be more numerous than any other people". The jihadis believe that there is no God other than Allah, whose sovereignty extends to the whole world. Those who don't believe this are kafirs, by killing whom a Muslim become ghazi or conqueror.
The point being made is that unlike other terrorists who spurt, blossom, wilt and eventually perish, jihadis have the potential for eternity, universality, ideology and, above all, total commitment to divinity. Their guns and bombs are merely the teeth and claws that are backed by a muscular body, a destructive brain and a soul ready to perish in pursuit of a "better" after life.
The marshals in the air, who often stand in as stewards, seldom know much beyond their specific functions. Certainly, they are not familiar with the behavioural habits of different nationals, whether Indian or other. They react to what they perceive to be the slightest threat to security. A passenger ignoring their instructions is a serious symptom, especially after 9/11 and more so since 7/7. By the Government taking the 12 Mumbai textile traders' side, it can only prejudice other airline staff against Indian passengers in general.
In any case, why haul up the Dutch Ambassador whose Government merely responded to the emergency request by the aircraft pilot. Northwestern is an American airline of many decades' standing. If KLM held some shares in it, as was popularly believed, should it make any difference? Moreover, for several years now, KLM has been taken over by Air France. <b>What kind of diplomacy is the MEA conducting? It seems to be a gesture to appease the Muslim sentiment in India? </b>
(The writer is a former BJP MP and author of several books)
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--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> They got what they deserved. NW is not run by Mulayam Singh yadav, thank goodness.