Sad, sad Pakistan

In the immediate aftermath of the Kashmir earthquake of 2005, for example, the army was called upon to reopen devastated roads and distribute supplies. The scale of the disaster meant many victims were left pleading for more help. But, for all that, many acknowledged that the army did a pretty good job in atrociously difficult circumstances.

This time it's different. Hundreds of thousands of military personnel are fighting the Taliban in the north-west of the country. The constraints this has placed on the military's response to the flood has only served to expose more clearly the incapacity of the civil administrative structures.

The weakness of the state has reached extraordinary levels. Fewer than 5% of Pakistanis pay any tax. The government is unable to provide schools and medical care for tens of millions of people.

But even if the flood has heightened the level of criticism they face, the politicians will not be unduly concerned. They are so used to being viewed as incompetent and self-serving that they are largely immune to public criticism.

Some Pakistanis fear that hardline Islamists could exploit the state's failure by mounting relief programmes. But past experience has shown that the religious organisations also lack the ability to deliver aid on a national scale.

Except for a lucky few, Pakistan's flood victims are on their own. Many will survive only because their poverty has rendered them extraordinarily tough and resourceful.

Owen Bennett Jones

from the Guardian, 14th August 2010

The Floods in Pakistan continue to bring devastation

The flooding in Pakistan continues. Fortunatly we have been able to gather donation and later today, I will send them to Pakistan. They will hopefully bring relief to many people.
These last few days, I have been preoccupied with the events in Pakistan and more or less holding my breath as money has been donated for this tradgedy. In the midst of this, I received good news from India. The school that we had collected for in March/April was opened last week.

Terrible Floods in Pakistan kill more than 1000

After terrible flooding following the monsoon rains more than 1100 people have been killed in Pakistan.
Worst hit is the Kyber-Pakhtunkhwa, the province that borders with Afghanistan. Dozens of people are missing and 27,000 are currently cut off by the floods. More than one million people are homeless.
As the waters slower begin to recede there is fear that diseases might break out.

Two Pakistani Christian Leaders shot outside courtroom

Two leaders shot outside courtroom after handwriting report threatened to exonerate them.

FAISALABAD, Pakistan, July 19 (CDN) — Today suspected Islamic extremists outside a courthouse here shot dead two Christians accused of “blaspheming” Muhammad, the prophet of Islam.

The gunmen shot the Rev. Rashid Emmanuel, 32, and his 30-year-old brother Sajid Emmanuel, days after handwriting experts on Wednesday (July 14) notified police that signatures on papers denigrating Muhammad did not match those of the accused. Expected to be exonerated soon, the two leaders of United Ministries Pakistan were being led in handcuffs back to jail under police custody when they were shot at 2:17 p.m., Christians present said.

Rizwan Paul, president of advocacy group Life for All, said five armed, masked men opened fire on the two Christians amid crowds outside Faisalabad District and Sessions Court.

“Five armed, masked men attacked and opened fire on the two accused,” Paul said. “Sajid died on the spot,” while Rashid Emmanuel died later.

CLF President Khalid Gill said the bodies of the two Christians bore cuts and other signs of having been tortured, including marks on their faces, while the brothers were in police custody.

As news of the murders reached the slain brothers’ neighborhood of Dawood Nagar, Waris Pura, Faisalabad, Christians came out of their homes to vent their anger, Pagaan said. Police fired teargas cannons at Christian protestors, who in turn threw stones.


“The situation is very tense,” Gill said. “Police have arrested eight people for damaging property and burning tires.”

Paul of Life for All said tensions remained high.

“The situation in Faisalabad has deteriorated,” Paul said. “Indiscriminate shootings between Christians and Muslims have ensued. The situation has become very volatile, and local police have initiated a curfew.”

The courthouse shooters escaped, and Punjab’s inspector general has reportedly suspended the superintendent of police and his deputy superintendent for their failure to provide security to the slain brothers.

Lynch Mob Mentality
The report by handwriting experts to Civil Lines police station in Faisalabad presented a major setback to the case filed against Emmanuel and his younger brother under Section 295-C of Pakistan’s widely condemned blasphemy laws.

Muslims staged large demonstrations in the past week calling for the death penalty for the brothers, who were arrested when Rashid Emmanuel agreed to meet a mysterious caller at a train station but was instead surrounded by police carrying photocopied papers that denigrated Muhammad – supposedly signed by the pastor and his brother and bearing their telephone numbers.

The Muslim who allegedly placed the anonymous call to the pastor, Muhammad Khurram Shehzad, was the same man who filed blasphemy charges against Emmanuel and his brother and was already present at the Civil Lines police station when the pastor and an unnamed Christian arrived in handcuffs, said Pagaan of Harmony Foundation. Civil Lines police station is located in Dawood Nagar, Waris Pura, in Faisalabad.

Pagaan said that on July 1 Rashid Emmanuel received an anonymous phone call from a man requesting to see him, but the pastor declined as he was due to lead a prayer service in Railways Colony, Faisalabad. After the service, Emmanuel received a call at about 8 p.m. from the same man, who this time described himself as a respectable school teacher.


Pagaan said that Emmanuel agreed to meet him at the train station, accompanied by the unnamed Christian. As they reached the station, Civil Lines police surrounded them, showed them photocopies of a three-page document and arrested them for blaspheming Muhammad.

Sources told Compass that police released the young, unnamed Christian after a couple hours, and on July 4 officers arrested Emmanuel’s younger brother, a graduate student of business.

On July 10 and 11 hundreds of enraged Muslims paraded to the predominantly Christian colony of Dawood Nagar calling for the immediate death of the two Christian brothers. Some chanted, “Hang the blasphemers to death immediately,” sources said, adding that the mob hurled obscenities at Christ, Christians and Christianity.


Islamic extremists led the protests, and most participants were teenagers who pelted the main gate of the Waris Pura Catholic Church with stones, bricks and shards of glass and pounded the gate with bamboo clubs.

Some 500 protestors gathered on July 10, while on July 11 more than 1,600 demonstrated, according to Joseph Francis, head of Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement. Fearful Christians locked their homes, while others fled the area, as the demonstrators had threatened a repeat of the violence wreaked on Korian and Gojra towns in July and August 2009.

Nazim Gill, a resident of Waris Pura, told Compass that Muslims burned tires and chanted slogans against Christians last week, and that on Friday (July 16) announcements blared from mosque loudspeakers calling on Muslims “burn the houses of Christians.”

Khalid Gill contacted authorities to request help, and police forbid anyone to do any damage.

Saying “continuous gunshots have been heard for the past five hours now,” Kashif Mazhar of Life for All today said that Punjab Chief Minister Mian Shahbaz Sharif had ordered the provincial inspector general to restore law and order and arrest the murderers of the Christian brothers.

Other Victims
Khurram Shehzad had filed the blasphemy case on July 1 under Section 295-C of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which are commonly abused to settle personal scores.

Section 295-C states that “whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation, or by imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) shall be punishable with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall be liable to fine.”

Section 295-A of the blasphemy laws prohibits injuring or defiling places of worship and “acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class of citizens.” Section 295-B makes willful desecration of the Quran or a use of its extract in a derogatory manner punishable with life imprisonment.

Khalid Gill said Khurram Shehzad, a merchant of Rail Bazar, Faisalabad, filed the charge after his servant told him that the two Christians had put up blasphemous posters at a truck station.

The Emmanuel brothers had been running United Ministries Pakistan for the last two years in Dawood Nagar, area Christians said.

The last known Christian to die as a result of a false blasphemy charge was Robert Danish on Sept. 15, 2009. The 22-year-old Christian was allegedly tortured to death while in custody in Sialkot on a charge of blaspheming the Quran. Local authorities claimed he committed suicide.

Area Christians suspect police killed Danish, nicknamed “Fanish” or “Falish” by friends, by torturing him to death after the mother of his Muslim girlfriend contrived a charge against him of desecrating Islam’s scripture. The allegation led to calls from mosque loudspeakers to punish Christians, prompting an Islamic mob to attack a church building in Jathikai village on Sept. 11 and the beating of several of the 30 families forced to flee their homes. Jathikai was Danish’s native village.

Three prison officials were reportedly suspended after Danish died in custody.

In other recent blasphemy cases, on July 5 a Christian family from Model Town, Lahore, fled their home after Yousaf Masih, his wife Bashrian Bibi and their son-in-law Zahid Masih were accused of blaspheming the Quran. Some 2,000 Muslims protested and tried to burn their house, Christian sources aid.

Police have filed a case against them due to pressure from Muslim mobs, but local sources say the allegations grew out of personal enmity.

Faisalabad was the site of the suicidal protest of Bishop John Joseph. The late Roman Catholic bishop of Faisalabad took his own life in May 6, 1998 to protest the injustice of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

Taken from: http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/pakistan/

No respite for Kenya

Famine in Kenya from Newfrontiers on Vimeo.

CLIP ABOUT THE DROUGHT/FAMINE IN EAST AFRIKA VIA SKY NEWS

NEWS FROM NEPAL

Christians Plan Missionary Campaign. There are little more than 600,000 Christians in Nepal, less than one percent of its population, yet according to a Christian publication, Christianity Today, Nepal has one of the fastest-growing Christian populations among Asia’s 51 countries. A recent meeting of more than three dozen senior Christian missionaries at “a quiet resort just outside of the capital city” was devoted to forming “overarching strategies for the Himalayan region [Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan]” to encourage this growth. These included targeting “people not yet reached”; establishing a presence in the “neediest geographic areas”; and encouraging and promoting an indigenous Nepali missions movement. The areas of Nepal that were deemed to need most attention were its northern Tibetan Buddhist districts, the far west, and some districts in the Terai. As part of this campaign, the missionaries hope to “place personnel in national organizations or in government-sponsored positions.” They aim to establish churches on several different levels, from primary to discipleship, and give the missionary movement a “bi-vocational” character by combining its “church planting vocation” with projects that give it a “credible presence in the country,” such as hospitals. They recommend that their members seek non-tourist visas for entry into the country since “we believe it is easier to live and work in the Himalayan region as a resident expatriate.” Student visas that later could be converted might be considered as an opening option. Nepal, the world’s only official Hindu nation, allows freedom of worship but forbids proselytizing. The International Hindu Federation strongly condemned the Christian missionary plan after news of it was released, stating that any activity aimed against the national religion is a serious crime. The Christian effort may have been inspired by Pope Paul II’s call for greater evangelization in Asia and a need for “aggressive conversion” there. (Kathmandu Post, January 10, 14; February 10)

Sacrifing to the Wrong Goddess. For many years, locals have been sacrificing goats, buffaloes and chickens before a statue of the goddess Durga in Dev Daha Bhawanipur in Rupandehi district in south central Nepal. Recent excavations have revealed that the image is not that of Durga at all, but of Maya Devi, the mother of Lord Buddha. Buddhists, who are opposed to the taking of life, have tried to stop people from sacrificing animals there, and although the practice has decreased, it has not totally stopped. With its newly discovered identity, the statue has become the second most important place of Buddhist pilgrimage in Nepal, after Lumbini. “We tried to stop animal sacrifice at Dev Daha,” complained a leader of the local government, “but our efforts have gone in vain. We sought help from the District Administration Office and the Department of Archaeology but to no avail. Now we have formed a struggle committee to fight the evil practice.” (Kathmandu Post, January 20)

Another inspiring video

Shine from HistoryMaker on Vimeo.

Good News from Sri Lanka

After working in Sri Lanka for the past ten years, reporting good news from the island seems to be quite a paradox!
We are helping to set up a small farm in an area where water is in short supply. We have collected funds to build a well. Our friends got in touch with a Western NGO that helps to purify water. They have letf our friends with a number of purifying plants and they are now providing three villages with 350 families with clean water.

Fair Trade

Yesterday, I went to see a fair trade exhibition at the new Exibition Centre in Stuttgart.
As the present financial crisis starts to touch our purse, we look for bargins and cheap goods to help us maintain our standard of living. "But where are the goods coming from?" is a question that we need to ask. Lots of good being sold in the West are being produced using child labour, or cheap labour, which provides no protection for employees; some production damages the environment and Western food needs rob land that could be used to produce much more Eastern type food.
I learned at the exhibition yesterday, that even grave stones are produced using child labour.
Of course not all economic goods have a dubious origin. But sometimes paying less can be an expression of exploitation of those already less forunate that we are.