Stampede tragedy
Dear Sir,
The Haj  is the world’s largest annual gathering of people. The Haj is the fifth and final pillar of Islam which all able-bodied Muslims should perform once in their life time if they can afford.
After the tragic 2006 stampede, the Haj had been by and large incident-free as the result of number of safety measures taken by Saudi authorities, with massive spending of billions of dollars on upgrading safety infrastructure, crowd-controlling technology, building of flyovers, modern lighting systems, signages in many languages, stationing of highly-motivated and trained security forces besides volunteers from all countries to help and guide pilgrims to perform a safe Haj.
Thursday’s tragedy occurred at Mina, outside the holy city of Makkah.
According to some Indian TV reports, the most likely reason for the stampede was many of the pilgrim’s impatience. They wanted to complete the ritual at Jamarat at the earliest due to which the place got overcrowded and one slight mistake led to Thursday’s disaster.
It is a very sad news indeed. My heartfelt and deepest condolences and prayers for the bereaved families who lost their dear ones in this tragic accident and prayers for speedy recovery for those injured.

Ramesh G Jethwani
Bangalore, India
(Address supplied)

Time for women to speak up
Dear Sir,
I enjoyed reading the article “End discrimination against women” (Gulf Times, August 16 ) and I noticed a lot of similarities between the Tanzanian culture and the Armenian one. I also agree with the point in the article that the gap between women’s legal rights and their ability to claim them relies a lot on custom, religion, or ethnic affiliation.
In the Armenian culture, women are told to go to school, get an education and build a career for themselves, but after marriage, they are told to forget about the future they want to build for themselves in order to be a housewife.
Although given the opportunity to build a name for themselves, women often choose the path of becoming a housewife since they are conditioned to believe that is their ultimate goal in life. This approach quite prevalent in the Tanzanian culture. Women don’t have a right to their land because men are considered to be of more “value” in the Tanzanian culture. It is not fair that women are given all opportunities initially but then are not granted any chance to fulfil the promises at the end.
I would like more women to stand up and claim their possessions just like the two Tanzanian women who are mentioned in the Gulf Times article. Many women find it disrespectful to speak up for their rights but they have to do so as I believe that is the only way some sort of change will be brought about.

Victoria Nalbandian
Victoria.nalbandian.185@my.csun.edu