Mission & Justice

Aung Hla Tun; 12/5/08

Desperate survivors of Cyclone Nargis poured out of Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta yesterday in search of food, water and medicine as aid workers warned that up to 1.5 million faced death if emergency supplies did not get through soon. Buddhist temples and schools in towns on the outskirts of the storm’s trail of destruction were now makeshift refugee centres for women, children and the elderly as millions of dollars in emergency aid was stalled on airport tarmacs pending permission to enter the country and hundreds of relief specialists were waiting for visas. The reclusive military government is accepting aid from the outside world, including from the UN, but has made clear it will not let in the foreign logistics teams needed to transport the aid into the inundated delta.

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Justine Ferrari & Lauren Wilson; 12/5/08

Dreamtime is no longer an acceptable term to describe the collection of Aboriginal creation stories, and should be referred to as The Dreaming or The Dreamings. And the structure of traditional Aboriginal society should not be described as primitive - but as complex and diverse, and the term “native” should be replaced by “indigenous groups” or “language groups”.  Advice for teaching indigenous students, which has been prepared by the West Australian and South Australian education departments, contains lists of appropriate words to describe Aboriginal people and culture.  The West Australian document, part of its Aboriginal Perspectives Across the Curriculum project, contains the headings “less appropriate terminology” and “more appropriate terminology”, and sets out unsuitable words and their substitutes.

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Jeremy Roberts & John Wiseman; 12/5/08

Former federal indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough was warned two years ago not to deal with certain prominent Aboriginal figures in South Australia’s remote northwest because they were being investigated for sex crimes, he has revealed. Mr Brough - who lost his federal seat of Longman in Queensland at the last election - said the confidential advice to steer clear of several high profile indigenous people came from South Australia’s Aboriginal Affairs Minister Jay Weatherill. Mr Brough said he was breaking his silence out of frustration at the Rann Government’s failure to move decisively against sexual predators in the state’s northern desert lands, in spite of evidence reaching as far as Mr Weatherill.

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Andrew Trounson; 12/5/08

Shirley Godwin knows all about Aboriginal mistrust of the medical system. It was in a West Australian hospital shortly after her birth 41years ago that she was separated from her indigenous mother and placed with foster parents in Victoria. But now Ms Godwin is one of the shockingly small band of just over 100 indigenous medical students whose ambition is to help overcome that historic mistrust of health professionals. Like the majority of her indigenous colleagues, she wants to use her skills to tackle the massive health disadvantages in Aboriginal communities.

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11/5/08

A woman and a child were among four killed during a US military operation targeting Al Qaida in northern Iraq, the military said on Sunday. The two civilians were killed along with two armed men. The military said it regretted the death of the civilians. The military said US forces fired on a car carrying suspected militants that refused to stop near the northern city of Mosul on Saturday.

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11/5/08

Saudi Arabia on Sunday beheaded a national convicted of killing a compatriot, the Interior Ministry said. Eid Bin Hamjahuj Al Shimari was found guilty of shooting dead a fellow national with a machine gun, the ministry said in a statement published on the SPA news agency. Al Shimari was executed in Arar town near the border with Iraq; becoming the 57th person to be executed in the kingdom this year.

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11/5/08; http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=7768

Women cyclists ride through the streets of Amman on Friday. The ride, which has become an annual event to campaign for peace and highlight the plight of Arab women, started in the Lebanese capital last week and the cyclists passed through Syria before arriving in the Kingdom through the Jaber crossing. More than 250 women from 30 countries including the US, Britain, Japan, South Africa, Turkey and Iran are taking part in the event, being held for the fourth consecutive year. Yesterday, the women rode to Madaba, where they visited religious and historical sites as well as Mount Nebo and the Baptism Site. The ‘Follow the Women’ bike ride was set up in 2003 by Detta Regan, a well-known international youth work adviser and European Woman of the Year in 2004

11/5/08; http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=109781&d=11&m=5&y=2008

A group of tribesmen in the southern Taif area have rallied together and developed a novel way of ensuring that spinsters find grooms. In order to encourage men to take second wives, the tribesmen, who belong to one of the largest tribes in the area, have decided to offer SR20,000 to anyone who takes a second wife. Awad Al-Lahiby told Al-Madinah newspaper that he and a couple of his cousins are funding the award, which will be given two months before the wedding. He added that the purpose of the award is to make marriage easy in order to reduce the number of single women in their tribe.

Walaa Hawari; 11/5/08
The National Society for Human Rights has urged officials to take urgent steps to save more than 900 children between 7 and 18 currently in juvenile homes across the Kingdom on drug related charges. There are 280 youngsters in juvenile homes in Jizan, 216 in Riyadh, 213 in Jeddah and nine in Hail. As part of efforts to prevent drug addiction, the Ministry of Interior and the General Directorate for Combating Drugs have developed a school program. The program, which aims to educate students about the harmful effects of drugs, is expected to be implemented in all academic levels starting next year.

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11/5/08

A power plant in Gaza City has shut down, affecting 500,000 local inhabitants and forcing local hospitals to run on reserve fuel. Large parts of the Gaza Strip, particularly Gaza City, were in darkness after the main power station shut down its generators on Saturday. The Hamas government’s energy department said that about 55 per cent of Gaza City and 35 per cent of the territory’s other areas had power outages as a result of the shutdown. With hospital generators running out of fuel, it is feared that medical equipment will stop functioning soon.

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