March 11 Photo Brief: Japan commemorates second anniversary of 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Pakistani Christians, camel races, 2,200 pigs dead
Japan commemorates second anniversary of 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Pakistani Christians, camel races in Mongolia, 2,200 pigs found dead in China and more in today’s daily brief.
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- A Buddhist monk prays toward the sea on March 11, 2013 in Ootsuti, Iwate prefecture, Japan. On March 11 Japan commemorates the second anniversary of the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that claimed more than 18,000 lives. (Ken Ishii/Getty Images)
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- Wrecked vehicles remain in a field of reeds in Namie, two years after the March 11, 2011 tsunami and earthquake, near the striken TEPCO’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Fukushima prefecture on March 11, 2013. March 11, 2013 marks the second anniversary of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake that sent a huge wall of water into the coast of the Tohoku region, splintering whole communities, ruining swathes of prime farmland and killing nearly 19,000 people. (Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images)
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- Police officers in radiation protection suits bow their heads to offer prayers in silence for tsunami victims in Namie, near the striken TEPCO’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Fukushima prefecture on March 11, 2013. March 11, 2013 marks the second anniversary of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake that sent a huge wall of water into the coast of the Tohoku region, splintering whole communities, ruining swathes of prime farmland and killing nearly 19,000 people. (Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images)
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- Candles forming the words “Thank you for all your help” are seen during a candlelight vigil at Arahama area in Sendai, Miyagi prefecture, an area destroyed by the March 11, 2011 disaster, in this picture taken by Kyodo March 11, 2013. Japan honoured the victims of its worst disaster since World War II on Monday: the March 11, 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis that killed almost 19,000 people and stranded 315,000 evacuees, including refugees who fled radiation from the devastated Fukushima atomic plant. (Kyodo/Reuters)
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- Japanese people pay their respect during a memorial ceremony to commemorate the victims of the 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 11, 2013 in Kesennuma, Japan. Japan is commemorating the second anniversary of the 2011 Magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that claimed more than 18,000 lives. (Athit Perawongmetha/Getty Images)
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- Eri Hashimoto (L) and Shizue Hashimoto pray for their father, who is still missing, where their house used to stand on March 11, 2013 in Ootsuti, Iwate prefecture, Japan. On March 11 Japan commemorates the second anniversary of the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that claimed more than 18,000 lives. (Ken Ishii/Getty Images)
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- An elderly man sits as he and with his wife (not pictured) visit a cemetery to pay respects to their son who was killed in the March 2011 tsunami, in Minamisoma in Fukushima prefecture on March 11, 2013. March 11, 2013 marks the second anniversary of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake that sent a huge wall of water into the coast of the Tohoku region, splintering whole communities, ruining swathes of prime farmland and killing nearly 19,000 people. (Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images)
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- Kesennuma city is seen during a lightshow on March 11, 2013 in Kesennuma, Japan. Japan is commemorating the second anniversary of the 2011 Magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that claimed more than 18,000 lives. (Athit Perawongmetha/Getty Images)
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- The grounded No.18 Kyotoku Maru fishing boat is illuminated as Japan commemorates the victims of the 2011 Magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 11, 2013 in Kesennuma, Japan. Japan is commemorating the second anniversary of the 2011 Magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that claimed more than 18,000 lives. (Athit Perawongmetha/Getty Images)
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- A visitor poses for a portrait during Lisbon Fashion Week March 10, 2013. (Rafael Marchante/Reuters)
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- Azra, 68, looks at her dead pet bird in a cage at her home, which was burnt by a mob two days earlier, in Badami Bagh, Lahore March 11, 2013. Hundreds of Pakistani Christians took to the streets across the country on Sunday, demanding better protection after a Christian neighbourhood was torched in the city of Lahore a day earlier in connection with the country’s controversial anti-blasphemy law. (Mohsin Raza/Reuters)
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- Contestants ride camels during a camel race at Tsonjin Boldog of Tov aimag, near the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator, March 10, 2013. (B.Rentsendorj/Reuters)
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- North Korean soldiers with weapons attend military training in an undisclosed location in this picture released by the North’s official KCNA news agency in Pyongyang March 11, 2013. South Korea and U.S. forces are conducting large-scale military drills until the end of April, while the North is also gearing up for a massive state-wide military exercise. North Korea has accused the U.S. of using the military drills in South Korea as a launch pad for a nuclear war and has threatened to scrap the armistice with Washington that ended the 1950-53 Korean War. (KCNA/Reuters)
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- The mother of Ram Singh, the driver of the bus in which a young woman was gang-raped and fatally injured three months ago, wails inside her house at Ravi Das camp in New Delhi March 11, 2013. Singh hanged himself in his jail cell on Monday, prison authorities said, but his family and lawyer said they suspected “foul play”. Singh, the main accused in India’s most high-profile criminal case, killed himself in a cell he shared with three other inmates in New Delhi’s Tihar jail just before dawn, prison spokesman Sunil Gupta said. Ravi Das camp is the slum where four of the six accused in the rape case including Singh reside at. (Mansi Thapliyal/Reuters)
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- Balinese Hindu devotees carry effigies known as “Ogoh-Ogoh” during a parade one day before ‘Silent Day’ in Denpasar on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali on March 11, 2013. The predominantly Hindu island of Bali in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-populated nation, will celebrate the ‘Day of Silence’ on March 12, locally known as Nyepi. (Sonny Tumbelaka/AFP/Getty Images)
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- A lion stretches early morning at Nairobi’s National Park March 11, 2013. The park is located just 4 miles from the Kenya’s capital city center. (Marko Djurica/Reuters)
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- A dead pig lies on a street in Pinghu, Zhejiang province, March 11, 2013. Over 2,200 pigs have been found dead in one of Shanghai’s main water sources, official media reported on March 11, 2013, triggering a public outcry in China where concerns over food safety and environmental pollution run high. (Aly Song/Reuters)
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- Linda Finkel-Talvadkar, Helen Ramsey and Barbara Elsas check each others’ signs while demonstrating in favor of stricter gun laws on the north side of the White House March 11, 2013 in Washington, DC. A pre-school teacher from the District of Columbia, Elsas and her friends have demonstrated outside of the White House every Monday since a movie theater shooting killed 12 and injured 58 others last July in Aurora, Colorado. “If one student hits another with a rock them I’m not going to give all the children rocks,” Elsas said while criticizing National Rifle Association’s proposal that more armed guards be posted in schools. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
North Korea slams U.N. “plot” to investigate its human rights record
Tom Miles, Reuters
1:54 p.m. EDT, March 11, 2013
GENEVA (Reuters) – North Korea condemned a threatened U.N. investigation into its alleged human rights abuses on Monday and denounced a U.N. report as “faked material … invented by the hostile forces, defectors and other rabbles”.
The U.N. Human Rights Council is likely to back a call by Japan and the European Union to set up a “Commission of Inquiry” later this month, meaning that the isolated Asian state will face much closer scrutiny.
“It is nothing more than an instrument of political plot aimed at sabotaging our socialist system by defaming the dignified image of the DPRK and creating an atmosphere of international pressure under the pretext of ‘human rights protection’,” North Korea’s Ambassador So Se Pyong told the Council.
The likely establishment of a U.N. investigation follows a report by an independent expert, Indonesian lawyer Marzuki Darusman, identifying human rights violations including kidnapping of foreign nationals, torture, and a gulag system thought to hold up to 200,000 prisoners.
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