Kathleen Parker; 18/2/02;
In a time of constant calamity and crisis fatigue, proposed legislation in Uganda to execute gays passes through the American consciousness with the impact of a weather report. Corrupt politicians count on the brevity of the American attention span, but certain items demand a tap of the pause button. How exactly does the idea of executing gays evolve in a majority-Christian nation?
Dan Macdougall; 12/2/09
The dawn prayer had begun prematurely in the cold darkness some time after 3am. Clinging to the upturned hull of the Nazar, the fishing boat that had carried the migrants out into the black waters off Tripoli, Libya, the survivors had dreamt they were floating west and, by Allah’s divine grace, had come upon the distant green lights of Malta. For two days they had clung to the oily hull of the ship. Again and again they had slipped backwards into the watery Mediterranean tomb that surrounded them. Each time they had somehow made it back on to the rotten wooden carcass of the boat, using the floating corpses of other would-be migrants to help them climb back. “Dear God, how many can there be?” whispered the captain of the Libyan coastguard vessel to his deckhand, repeating the words in Berber and Arabic as the high beam on the starboard of the Libyan navy rescue ship drew closer and lit up the remains of the vessel.
Adrian Phoon; 12/1/10
A recent proposal in Uganda to legislate the execution of homosexuals has sparked international outrage. Although the Government has since revised its prescribed sentence from death to life imprisonment, the bill remains striking for its overt hostility towards gays. The move is more than just a Ugandan oddity – it is the embodiment of a murderous fantasy, cherished by fanatics in the West, to extinguish homosexual life altogether. It is easy for the West to dismiss the bill as a local phenomenon, emblematic of African opposition to ”civilised progress”. Deeply religious and protective of traditional family structures, Uganda has long been hostile to homosexuality.
David Aaronovitch; 9/1/09
You may have come across a report this week about the imprisonment in Malawi of two men who had just become engaged. Tiwonge Chimbalanga – a transvestite – and Steven Monjeza, both in their early twenties, pledged themselves to each other in front of 500 witnesses and then were carted off to jail, and may now face a sentence of 14 years. The fate of the men may have gained salience from recent events in Uganda. There the parliament has been considering a draft law, drawn up by David Bahati, an MP, entitled the Anti-Homosexuality Act, whose provisions aim to “prohibit any form of sexual relations between persons of the same sex”, with penalties including life imprisonment and, for “aggravated homosexuality”, the death penalty. One can only marvel at the bill’s provisions, such as the one defining that a “sexual act … may include the touching of another’s breast, vagina, penis or anus … ” and that “touching includes touching (a) with any part of the body; (b) with anything else; (c) through anything …”
(more…)
Jeffrey Gettleman; 5/1/10
Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about ”curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the US, arrived in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks. The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organiser, was ”the gay agenda – that whole hidden and dark agenda” – and the threat homosexuals posed to the traditional African family. For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened to the Americans, who were presented as ”experts” on homosexuality.
(more…)
15/12/09: http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=129601&d=15&m=12&y=2009
A community leader in Somalia says an explosion of an old land mine has killed six children from the same family near the border with Ethiopia. Hareri Hassan Barre says six children between the ages of 3 and 11 were killed by the blast as their mother prepared a meal nearby. He says only the mother, father and a small baby survived in the family of nine.Barre says the area is full of land mines because of conflict between Somalia and Ethiopia in the late 1970s. The UN Mine Action Center says that 357 communities in Somalia are affected by land mines, which were first laid in the country in 1964. Mines appear along the Ethiopian border and around strategic facilities, camps and towns.
by Elizabeth Palmberg; 11/12/09; http://blog.sojo.net/2009/12/11/halliburton-and-the-resource-curse/
Part I of an interview with David Ugolor, head of the African Network for Environment and Economic Justice ; David Ugolor spoke with Sojourners assistant editor Elizabeth Palmberg earlier this year.
Sojourners: Nigeria is sometimes cited as an example of the “resource curse,” where a country’s natural resources — oil, in the case of Nigeria — bring in a lot of money, but that money doesn’t go to sustainable development or to reducing poverty. But of course, that “curse” isn’t cast by magicians someplace, but by human interactions, including huge, huge amounts of money from wealthy corporations. Could you talk about your battle against that? David: Well, in the first place Nigeria was an agriculturally based economy — agriculture was responsible for greater percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The oil was discovered in 1958 in Oloibiri community in Niger Delta Region, [and] the agricultural sector started to decline as a result of the discovery of the oil.Today, over 95 percent of the country’s income from exports is derived from oil — while about 70 percent of the total population of 140 million live below one dollar per day.
Tom Fawthrop; 7/12/09
In universities across Cuba, the next generation of African doctors are being trained on scholarships that may prove more valuable than any foreign aid package to their continent. When they graduate, the doctors will return home to treat patients in some of Africa’s poorest countries, equipped with some of the best medical training in the world. Their education and training will not have cost them anything, and many say they plan to use their skills to help those too poor to pay for treatment. “I am from a very poor family in Eastern Cape,” says Sydney Mankale Moroasale, a South African medical student currently studying at Cienfuegos University in Cuba. “People all around me were suffering. I said to myself ‘Why couldn’t I be the one to help them?’ It was my dream to be a doctor.”
Melanie Weldon-Soiset; 3/12/09;
Melanie Weldon-Soiset is a Policy and Organizing Associate at Sojourners and a third year Master of Divinity student at Wesley Theological Seminary.
The season of Advent always invites me to contemplate many facets of Christianity: the contrast between what God extols versus the world’s values, the power of patience, and the strength of hope. While important in all times and places, each of these themes can especially speak this year to the current situation in Sudan. Sudan is preparing for an election in April 2010 that many predict could be catastrophic and could further strain divisions between the north and the south. Poverty, violence, and discord have raged throughout Sudan, and the evils of warfare have especially threatened the women and children. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has purposely encouraged rape as a weapon of war — therefore allowing gender-based violence to spread throughout the country. As I reflect on the dire situation in Sudan, I am reminded of the angel Gabriel’s visit to a peasant woman — in a politically turbulent region — named Mary.
24/11/09
Twenty years ago the United Nations adopted the Convention of the Rights of the Child. The CRC or UNCRC, sets out the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of children. Nations that ratify the UNCRC are bound to it by international law. As of December 2008, 193 signatories had ratified it, including every member of the UN except the US and Somalia. The treaty restricts the involvement of children in military conflicts and prohibits the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. Bangladesh is a signatory to the UN pact. However, child marriage remains a widely accepted practice. According to a UN report, 63 per cent of all Bangladeshi girls below the age of 25 are married off before they reach the legal age of 18. Non-governmental organisations in the country are trying implement a clause in the UNCRC to protect underage brides. Al Jazeera’s Nicolas Haque reports from Dhaka on how the simple birth certificate can help reduce the number of children forced into marriages. The extreme cases of child marriages also include the Democratic Republic of Congo and Afghanistan.
Dalila Mahdawi, 13/11/09
Four Ethiopian women are thought to have killed themselves in three weeks. Beirut must protect these women .They mop floors, take out the rubbish, walk the dog, buy groceries and care for the children, the elderly or disabled. Many a well-to-do and lower middle class Lebanese family relies on migrant domestic workers to take care of their household, but when it comes to providing for these women, not all return the favour. Migrant domestic workers — women who work as live-in or freelance housekeepers, cooks and nannies — form a vital presence in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East, where women’s increased participation in the workforce has not been accompanied by state-backed social or childcare services. There are thought to be about 200,000 women, mostly from the Philippines, Ethiopia and Sri Lanka, in Lebanon alone.
23/10/09
The Democratic Republic of Congo is grappling with rampant rape, which has become an every day practice and is used as a weapon of war, the UN has said. It said almost 5,400 cases of rape against women were reported in the South Kivu province during the first six months of the year. Elisabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said South Kivu, near Rwanda, was an increasingly dangerous place for civilians, especially for women. Night-time attacks against civilians by unidentified armed elements, and rape against women, remain widespread,” Byrs said. About 90 per cent of the rapes are allegedly committed by armed groups or regular forces. Nabwemba Natabaro, a woman in South Kivu, told Al Jazeera that she had been held in the bush for two months and repeatedly gang raped, after being abducted from her village.
(more…)
Angus Hohenboken; 19/10/09; (4 Items)
Sudanese refugee Adieu Akoi understands the desperation of boatpeople risking their lives for the safety of Australian shores. After witnessing the killing of her family in Sudan’s bloody civil war, she spent 10 years in a Kenyan refugee camp fearing for her own life before deciding to break free. Under the constant threat of rape and murder at the hands of Turkana villagers, who opposed the presence of the camp, she was able to apply for refugee status through the UN in 2000, but progress was slow. Three years later she received a form in the mail from a cousin in Australia, the start of a gruelling application process that took a further 1 1/2 years to complete. “There was a lot of, lot of, lot of paperwork,” Ms Akoi said. “You had to tell the real story and say if you saw people dying. I had to say that I witnessed my father dying. I had to tell about the murders in the camp.”
(more…)
13/10/09
A Sudanese court upheld a death sentence on Monday against four men convicted of murdering a US diplomat and his driver in Khartoum last year in a New Year’s killing that shocked the city. The four, described by the prosecution and witnesses as “religious extremists”, were condemned to hang for shooting and killing John Granville, 33, who worked for the US Agency for International Development, and his driver, Abdelrahman Abbas Rahama. Granville was the first US official to be killed in Khartoum for more than 30 years. He was returning home from New Year celebrations on Jan. 1, 2008, when he and Rahama were shot in a crime that shocked Sudanese and expatriates in the capital. “Under Islamic Shariah and Sudanese law, all religions, nationalities and ethnicities are considered equal,” Sidahmed Al-Badri, the judge, said.
1/10/09
New HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa are growing twice as quickly as anti-retroviral drugs are rolled out, despite a 39 percent hike in treatment access, UNAIDS. The number of people receiving AIDS treatments in the region, where two-thirds of the world’s HIV positive people live – rose from 2.1 million in 2007 to 2.9 million last year. Although the region showed the world’s greatest progress in expanding AIDS treatment, new infections still outpace the numbers of people on the life-saving drugs, according to new figures from the World Health Organisation, UNAIDS and the UN Children’s Fund. “The number of new infections in the region is outpacing the number of people getting treatment by a ratio of two to one,” regional UNAIDS director Mark Stirling told a press briefing in Johannesburg.
Bruce Loudon; 26/9/09
A life sentence imposed on a man over the murder of the former captain of South Africa’s women’s soccer team has been hailed as a crucial win in the battle against a spate of “corrective rape” attacks terrorising the nation’s lesbian community. Eudy Simelane, 31, had hoped to become the first female to referee a match in the all-male soccer World Cup next year. Instead, she became the highest-profile victim of “penis correction” – a practice in which gangs of men seek to “cure” lesbians by pack-raping and even killing them, as they did in the case of Simelane. As Themba Mvubu, 24, was sentenced in the Delmas court, east of Johannesburg, on Tuesday, judge Ratha Mokgoathleng said: “Eudy Simelane suffered a brutal, undignified death.” The judge said: “She was stripped naked, stabbed, assaulted, raped. What more indignity can a person endure?” As he was led from the dock after being sentenced to life for the murder, 20 years for being an accomplice to rape and 15 years for robbery, Mvubu said: “I’m not sorry.”
