Starting Points

Mar 12, 2010

A Christian Overture to Muslims Has Its Critics

By MARK OPPENHEIMER

January was an ugly month in Malaysia. At least 10 churches were firebombed or vandalized, as was a Sikh temple. Severed boars’ heads — particularly offensive to Muslims, who are not supposed to eat pork — were found on the grounds of two mosques. The cause of this inter-religious strife was a court battle over whether non-Muslims may use the Arabic word “Allah” to refer to God.

The reports from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital, described events that we imagine could never happen in the United States, where the First Amendment is supposed to guard against such conflict. But we have fights over religious language, too, even if the violence rarely rises above name-calling.

On Feb. 3, Ergun Caner, the president of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, in Lynchburg, Va., focused attention on a Southern Baptist controversy when he called Jerry Rankin, the president of the denomination’s International Mission Board, a liar. Dr. Caner has since apologized for his language, but he still maintains that the “Camel Method,” a strategy Dr. Rankin endorses for preaching Christianity to Muslims, is deceitful.

Instead of talking about the Jesus of the New Testament, missionaries using the Camel Method point Muslims to the Koran, where in the third chapter, or sura, an infant named Isa — Arabic for Jesus — is born. Missionaries have found that by starting with the Koran’s Jesus story, they can make inroads with Muslims who reject the Bible out of hand. But according to Dr. Caner, whose attack on Dr. Rankin came in a weekly Southern Baptist podcast, the idea that the Koran can contain the seeds of Christian faith is “an absolute, fundamental deception.”

David Garrison, a missionary who edited a book on the Camel Method by Kevin Greeson, the method’s developer, defends the use of the Koran as a path to Jesus. “You aren’t criticizing Muhammad or any other prophets,” Dr. Garrison said, “just raising Jesus up.”

He explained that after reading the sura in which Maryam, or Mary, gives birth to Isa, a missionary might ask a Muslim, “Do you know of any other prophets born of a virgin?”

And, Dr. Garrison continued: “It says in that passage that Isa would be able to cleanse the leper, even raise the dead. At that point in the conversation with Muslims, we say, ‘Isn’t it interesting that Isa had this tremendous power that God gave to him? Even death was under his power.’

“Then you ask the question, ‘Is there any other prophet that had this kind of power?’ And in Islam, there isn’t.”

“Camel” is not (readers might be gladdened to learn) a reference to a beast of burden in Arab lands. Rather, it is Mr. Greeson’s acronym — Chosen Angels Miracles Eternal Life — to help missionaries remember aspects of Isa’s story.

While Dr. Rankin, who said that he had received Dr. Caner’s letter of apology, would not offer a specific number of souls won to Christ, he said there was anecdotal evidence that the Camel Method was an important innovation in reaching the Muslim world.

“We have just heard amazing reports all over South Asia, India, Pakistan, North Africa, where people have found a receptivity to the Gospel,” he said.

Christians have long known that there is a Jesus in the Koran, but missionaries have only sporadically made use of that story.

Gabriel Said Reynolds, who teaches Islamic theology at the University of Notre Dame, said that Christians in eighth-century Baghdad defended their faith by pointing to passages in the Koran. “But that was never with an eye toward converting Muslims,” Dr. Reynolds said. “Such a thing would have been unthinkable. It was only a way of gaining legitimacy in intellectual conversations.”

In recent years, however, missiologists — scholars of mission work — have begun urging “insider” evangelism and “contextualization”: placing the Gospel in an indigenous context, to reach those from alien cultures.

“At the extreme,” Dr. Reynolds said, “these Christian missionaries will grow beards like Muslims, give up pork, even say that they are ‘muslims’ — lower-case ‘m’ — in the Arab-adjective sense of ‘submissive to God.’ ”

The danger, critics of the Camel Method say, is twofold: exploitation of Muslim culture and infidelity to the Christian message. According to Dr. Caner, missionaries who say the Koran can be a “bridge” to Christianity risk obscuring real differences between the two traditions.

For example, the missionary board recommends that in some cases missionaries use “Allah” to refer to God. As Dr. Garrison explains it, “there is only one God, the God who created the heavens and earth,” so talking about the Christian God as “Allah” is not misleading. But Allah is also the specific god of the Koran, who says things the New Testament God would not. And the Isa of the Koran, while based on the Jesus of the New Testament, is quite different.

“You can ask any Muslim,” said Dr. Caner, a Turkish-American from a Muslim family who became a Christian in high school. “ ‘Do you think that the Allah of the Koran had a son?’ The most important sura in the entire Koran, sura 112, the pre-eminent chapter of the Koran, says explicitly, ‘Allah does not beget, nor is he begotten.’ ”

The missionaries’ use of “Allah” to refer to the Christian God thus strikes Dr. Caner as an error both semantic and theological. In good Baptist missionary fashion, he contextualizes his argument with a culturally relevant, if antiquated, example: the song “My Sweet Lord,” by George Harrison.

“There’s the word ‘Lord,’ ” Dr. Caner said. “Do you go, ‘Oh look, he’s a worshipper of God?’ ‘Lord’ is an English term, but is he talking about the same Lord” — the ones Christians worship?”

“Of course not,” Dr. Caner said, since at the time Mr. Harrison wrote the song, he was interested in Hare Krishna theology.

“Is it fair to use the George Harrison song and say he’s talking about the same god?” Dr. Caner asked. “My answer is no.”

Appeal if not happy with Court's decision, says Prosecutor-General while Defence Force Commander condemns conviction of soldiers and the use of Portuguese in Courts

Diario Nacional, March 11, 2010 language source: Tetun - The Prosecutor General Ana Pesoa Pinto has said that the only way for the lawyer for Frederico da Conceicao Oan Ki’ak, a former guerilla fighter, and Alberto da Costa Belo, to challenge the Court's decision is to appeal to the higher court.

Image by Rui Miguel da Silva Pinto via Flickr

Image via Wikipedia

Both Oan Ki’ak and Alberto were armed by the Defence Force to stabilise the country following the dysfunction of the Timorese National Police to maintain law and order in 2006.

“The only legal way is for the lawyer to lodge an appeal and make submission to the court so that the Court will process the case in accordance with the law. It is therefore inappropriate to make comments to the media,” Ms. Pinto said.

Ms. Pessoa made the comment following the statement by the lawyer for Florindo and Belo that he was dissatisfied with the recent decision made by the court to sentence Florindo to eight years and four months and Belo to six years and six months in prison.

Meanhile, in an extraordinary outburst reported by Televizaun Timor-Leste on March 11, 2010, the Timor-Leste Defence Force General (Falintil-FDTL) Commander Major General Taur Matan Ruak has said that members of the Defence Force are being criminalised for defending the country in times of war.

“Our Prime Minister Xanana was in the jungle defending his homeland and the Indonesian court convicted him as a criminal and now we are being criminalised as well for defending Timor,” Matan Ruak said Thursday in Metinaro, Dili.

He added that if defending the nation is a crime, then they would simply run away from defending the country in times of war.

He said that those who have big mouths today should be mindful of the sacrifices of the liberation army which brought good fortune for those who become ministers, presidents, and other important political positions.

“Those who have big mouths today should not forget that because of us defending the country they are now happy and hilarious …. as presidents, ministers, etc,”, said the two-star general.

He said that it is unacceptable for him that even after Timor-Leste gained its hard-fought independence, members of his defence force are still criminalised.

Recently the Dili District Court sentenced Frederico da Conceição Oan Ki’ak, a former guerilla fighter, and Alberto Belo eight and six years in prison respectively for an incident in May 2006.

Both Oan Ki’ak and Alberto were armed by the Defence Force to stabilise the country following the dysfunction of the Timorese National Police to maintain law and order in 2006.

In May 2006, many PNTL members joined F-FDTL deserters whose total was about half of the number of the defense force loyal to the government. The rebels were led by Major Alfredo Reinado Alves, who was then shot in a shoot-out at the resident of President Horta in early 2008.

Matan Ruak went on to harshly criticise the use of the Portuguese language in the Courts of East Timor, calling for the end of Portuguese in the judicial system because it caused difficulties for the people.

“As a General I ask all Timorese to join me in launching a big campaign to end the use of Portuguese in all Timorese courts,” said Matan Ruak.

Matan Ruak made the comment following the decision of the Dili District court where verdicts to sentence Oan Ki’ak and Alberto da Costa were read in Portuguese.

He said that the court should only use Tetun and other native languages in its proceedings.

Matan Ruak added that with the call for language change in the court, international judges, prosecutors, and lawyers should be able to speak Tetun, which is an official language of the country.

He urged that those who cannot speak Tetun should be replaced by Timorese to make the process easy for Timorese to comprehend.

Many Timorese judicial actors like lawyers, judges and public defenders, graduated from Indonesian law schools, making them competent in both Indonesian and Tetun.

Matan Ruak said that those cannot speak Portuguese should not be penalised for this reason as it was part of the history.

The Constitution adopts both Tetun and Portuguese as official languages of Timor while Indonesian and English are used as working languages in the country. Posted by : Voice of East Timor on 12 March 2010

SBY’s Timor History

SBY - top graduate 1973

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), like many of his generation of former military men, has a Timor history. Australian researcher Ernie Chamberlain shows that, while SBY may not have been in the very first wave of the 7 December 1975 Indonesian military invasion, he was on active duty in Timor in those early years of the occupation which had such catastrophic consequences for the Timorese population and resistance. While the detailed story of SBY’s roles inside Timor is yet to be told, what follows sketches the beginning of his Timor history.

Chamberlain writes:

In his senior year (1973) at the Akabri military academy at Magelang, Bambang Yudhoyono was the Dandivkortar (“top cadet”) – overseeing 3,000 cadets. On graduation in November 1973, as the “top student” among the 987 graduates (Prabowo Subianto, by the way, graduated the following year in third place), he was presented with the Bintang Adhi Makayasa medal personally by then President Soeharto.
From Akabri, he was posted as a platoon commander to Kostrad’s 330 Airborne/Raider Battalion (Commander 3 Platoon, “A” Company) serving in the period “1974-76″. That unit’s history website notes that the battalion saw service in Timor in “1975-1976″.
Indonesian journalist and author Hendro Subroto has written on 330 Battalion’s operations in several of his works. In particular, two battalions of 330 Battalion’s formation – the 17th Airborne Brigade/”Satgas B” – parachuted onto the Baucau airfield on 10 December 1975, but 330 Battalion (commanded by Major Syukur) did not arrive in Baucau from Kupang until 14 December in an airlanded operation utilising civil-type aircraft. Soon after landing, 330 Battalion led the ABRI advance south to Viqueque – meeting quite stiff Falintil opposition led by Sabika in the Lariguto/Ossu area.

SBY’s Timor entrance
But was Yudhoyono with 330 Battalion in Timor in December 1975 ? I think not.
Firstly, Hendro Subroto is an inveterate “name dropper”. In relating operations in Timor, he invariably highlights the presence/role of any later-to-become-senior ABRI officers. He makes no mention of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in the Baucau/Viqueque operation of 330 Battalion. Moreover, Yudhoyono reportedly attended English language training at the US military’s Defence Language Institute in Texas in late 1975/early 1976, followed by Airborne and Ranger training at Fort Benning in 1975-1976.
He apparently returned to Indonesia in mid-1976 – deploying to Timor in August 1976 as a platoon commander in 305 Battalion (a month after his marriage to the daughter of Major General Sarwo Edhie Wibowo a renowned/infamous commander of the RPKAD and graduate of the Australian Army’s Staff College at Queenscliff, Victoria). While little is known about 305 Battalion’s activities in Timor in 1976-1977, it reportedly operated principally in Lautem.
Among his medals, Yudhoyono wears the Satya Lencana Seroja, 1976 (Operasi Seroja – Operation Lotus – was the name given to the major Indonesian military campaign in Timor from December 1975 to November 1979)

Other connections
As an aside, over the years, Bambang Yudhoyono has had several koneksi with the Australian military – and was a close friend of Lieutenant General Peter Leahy (former Chief of Army, and now a professor heading the University of Canberra’s National Security Institute). They were in the same class at the US Command and Staff College, Leavenworth in 1990-1991 (Leahy was the “top” foreign student, Bambang Yudhoyono was “No.2″). It was planned that Yudhoyono attend the year-long “one-star” ADF ACDSS course at Weston Creek (Canberra) in 1996 – but in November 1995, Yudhoyono was quite suddenly posted to Bosnia-Herzegovina as the Chief Military Observer of the UN Peacekeeping Force.

Sources:

Subroto, S., Operasi Udara di Timor Timor (Air Operations in East Timor), Pustaka Sinar Harapan, Jakarta, 2005, pp.107-197.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susilo_Bambang_Yudhoyono

Military Academy website: http://www.akmil.ac.id

Battallion 330 website: http://www.yoniflinud330.mil.id/

More SBY biographical details: http://www.tokohindonesia.com/ensiklopedi/s/susilo-b-yudhoyono/biografi/keluarga.shtml

Ernie Chamberlain is a retired Australian brigadier, having served for 36 years – including as Australian Defence Attache in Jakarta in the mid-1990s. Since retirement in 1998, he has spent some years in Timor – including advising Defence Minister Roque Rodrigues and F-FDTL commander Taur Matan Ruak on defence policy and planning (2004-05).

Mar 11, 2010

Arab neighbors cast a wary eye on Iraq election results

With the first Iraq election results coming in, Middle East countries are watching close and gauging what the vote means for their influence on the oil-rich state.

Iraq election: Electoral workers sort through ballots cast in the national election in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday. Iraqi and UN officials say the first results from this week's parliamentary elections are likely to be released on Thursday.
(Karim Kadim/AP)

By Kristen Chick Correspondent, and Tom A. Peter Correspondent
posted March 11, 2010 at 4:08 pm EST

Cairo and Amman, Jordan —

As the first Iraq election results started to trickle in Thursday, many countries in the Middle East were watching closely for clues to how the outcome will shape regional dynamics.

A victory by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s coalition, which initial results show leading a tight race, would likely ensure the continued presence and influence of Iran in Iraqi politics.

But majority Sunni nations are watching for a surge from Iyad Allawi’s Iraqiya coalition. Mr. Allawi, a secular Shiite and former member of Saddam Hussein's Baath party, is seen as an Arab nationalist whose policies would tilt toward his Arab neighbors, rather than to Iran.

Under Mr. Hussein, Iraq was a bulwark for Arab states against the regional ambitions and influence of Iran, a Shiite regime long feared and often hated by its Sunni neighbors. Arab leaders are concerned that oil-rich Iraq could become part of an expanding sphere of Iranian influence.

"The issue here will be the reaction of Iran and the Sunni countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia," said Emad Gad, a political analyst at Cairo's Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, a government-financed think tank. "Iran is dealing with Iraq today as a region of Iranian influence, so Iran will refuse any Iraqi government that doesn’t deal with Iran as a big brother." Saudi Arabia would likely try to isolate a new Maliki government to counter Iranian influence, says Dr. Gad.

A new phase

Many in the region are watching the election with trepidation, and wondering what kind of regime will be left behind when US forces withdraw.

"We might be moving into a new phase where as the US takes a bow the other regional players step up their own presence, but it’s difficult to tell for now," says Peter Harling, the International Crisis Group’s project director for Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. "That’s one of the question marks for the period to come, how the US withdrawal and the vacuum that it entails will play out regionally."

In largely Sunni Arab Jordan, home to the second-largest population of Iraqi refugees after Syria, grocer Majdi Hijazin says he worries about what will happen if Shiites or Kurds gain more power. Mr. Hijazin says that he, like most Jordanians, hopes the Sunnis will be the big winners in the election. If not, he fears Iran may further influence Iraq, which could negatively affect Jordan in terms of both security and business opportunities.

"Of course it will have an effect on us Jordanians, but it’s very hard to know how exactly this election will affect us," he says. "Jordanians don’t know what the Shiites will do if they come into power."

Western enthusiasm 'premature'

Others across the region were more disinterested than worried, viewing US praise of the election as somewhat naïve and saying one election will not cause a huge political shift, or even much of a difference at all.

"Right now, the Egyptians are not interested in Iraq," said Ahmed Khalifa, a newspaper seller in Cairo. "The important things are Palestine, Gaza. Iraq doesn't affect us."

Samir Al Taqi, director of the Orient Center for International Studies in Damascus, called Western enthusiasm over the elections "premature." Before observers come to any conclusions about the election, he says they must first see if the new government is representative of Iraq’s different ethnic groups. If not, violence and instability are likely to continue.

"The Iraqi elections were a decisive step in Iraq’s path towards nation building. But we can’t yet judge whether they were a success and will move Iraq forward," he says.

And even if the election is proved a relative success, it will not mean an end to the country’s problems, says Ahmad Said Nufal, a political science professor at Yarmouk University in Irbid, Jordan. He predicts that his country and others such as Syria and Turkey will likely be hosting Iraqi refugees for years to come.

"I don’t think the election in Iraq will change anything. The problems between the parties will continue and at the same time terrorist attacks in Iraq will continue,” says Mr. Nufal. “We need two or three years to be sure before we say that [displaced] people can return back to Iraq."

Jordanians, Syrians want stability

Some Jordanians are hoping Iraq is stabilizing, providing business opportunities in the sprawling nation next door.

"If after the elections everything goes smoothly, it will affect us positively. People will start to do more business with Iraq and it will be more open between the two countries," says Georgette Fattaleh, a pharmacist in Amman. "But no one in Jordan thinks the elections will change Iraq. Now at the White House they are very happy about these elections, but it will not help."

In Syria, some hope a positive outcome to the elections will bring more stability to the region.

Amer Kasser, a telecommunications professional in Damascus, said it was positive to see a democracy emerging in the region and he hoped the government that emerges from the election would be strong enough to bring stability to Iraq.

Haifa Mohammad Said, a translator and editor at the Syrian Arab News Agency, also said she hoped the elections would be a positive step for the region, and allow Syria and Iraq to resolve border and refugee issues.

"The elections will hopefully help to do that," she says. "Whether this will happen or not depends on the results and whether there have been clean elections. Even so, Iraq still has a long way to go to get back on its feet."

Sarah Birke contributed to this report from Damascus, Syria.

US State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2009

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Front Matter
-03/11/10 Preface
-03/11/10 Overview and Acknowledgements
-03/11/10 Introduction

Africa
-03/11/10 Angola
-03/11/10 Benin
-03/11/10 Botswana
-03/11/10 Burkina Faso
-03/11/10 Burundi
-03/11/10 Cameroon
-03/11/10 Cape Verde
-03/11/10 Central African Republic
-03/11/10 Chad
-03/11/10 Comoros
-03/11/10 Congo, Democratic Republic of the
-03/11/10 Congo, Republic of the
-03/11/10 Cote d'Ivoire
-03/11/10 Djibouti
-03/11/10 Equatorial Guinea
-03/11/10 Eritrea
-03/11/10 Ethiopia
-03/11/10 Gabon
-03/11/10 Gambia, The
-03/11/10 Ghana
-03/11/10 Guinea
-03/11/10 Guinea-Bissau
-03/11/10 Kenya
-03/11/10 Lesotho
-03/11/10 Liberia
-03/11/10 Madagascar
-03/11/10 Malawi
-03/11/10 Mali
-03/11/10 Mauritania
-03/11/10 Mauritius
-03/11/10 Mozambique
-03/11/10 Namibia
-03/11/10 Niger
-03/11/10 Nigeria
-03/11/10 Rwanda
-03/11/10 Sao Tome and Principe
-03/11/10 Senegal
-03/11/10 Seychelles
-03/11/10 Sierra Leone
-03/11/10 Somalia
-03/11/10 South Africa
-03/11/10 Sudan
-03/11/10 Swaziland
-03/11/10 Tanzania
-03/11/10 Togo
-03/11/10 Uganda
-03/11/10 Zambia
-03/11/10 Zimbabwe

East Asia and the Pacific
-03/11/10 Australia
-03/11/10 Brunei Darussalam
-03/11/10 Burma
-03/11/10 Cambodia
-03/11/10 China (includes Tibet, Hong Kong, and Macau)
-03/11/10 Taiwan
-03/11/10 Fiji
-03/11/10 Indonesia
-03/11/10 Japan
-03/11/10 Kiribati
-03/11/10 Korea, Democratic People's Republic of
-03/11/10 Korea, Republic of
-03/11/10 Laos
-03/11/10 Malaysia
-03/11/10 Marshall Islands
-03/11/10 Micronesia, Federated States of
-03/11/10 Mongolia
-03/11/10 Nauru
-03/11/10 New Zealand
-03/11/10 Palau
-03/11/10 Papua New Guinea
-03/11/10 Philippines
-03/11/10 Samoa
-03/11/10 Singapore
-03/11/10 Solomon Islands
-03/11/10 Thailand
-03/11/10 Timor-Leste
-03/11/10 Tonga
-03/11/10 Tuvalu
-03/11/10 Vanuatu
-03/11/10 Vietnam

Europe and Eurasia
-03/11/10 Albania
-03/11/10 Andorra
-03/11/10 Armenia
-03/11/10 Austria
-03/11/10 Azerbaijan
-03/11/10 Belarus
-03/11/10 Belgium
-03/11/10 Bosnia and Herzegovina
-03/11/10 Bulgaria
-03/11/10 Croatia
-03/11/10 Cyprus
-03/11/10 Czech Republic
-03/11/10 Denmark
-03/11/10 Estonia
-03/11/10 Finland
-03/11/10 France
-03/11/10 Georgia
-03/11/10 Germany
-03/11/10 Greece
-03/11/10 Hungary
-03/11/10 Iceland
-03/11/10 Ireland
-03/11/10 Italy
-03/11/10 Kosovo
-03/11/10 Latvia
-03/11/10 Liechtenstein
-03/11/10 Lithuania
-03/11/10 Luxembourg
-03/11/10 Macedonia
-03/11/10 Malta
-03/11/10 Moldova
-03/11/10 Monaco
-03/11/10 Montenegro
-03/11/10 Netherlands
-03/11/10 Norway
-03/11/10 Poland
-03/11/10 Portugal
-03/11/10 Romania
-03/11/10 Russia
-03/11/10 San Marino
-03/11/10 Serbia
-03/11/10 Slovakia
-03/11/10 Slovenia
-03/11/10 Spain
-03/11/10 Sweden
-03/11/10 Switzerland
-03/11/10 Turkey
-03/11/10 Ukraine
-03/11/10 United Kingdom

Near East and North Africa
-03/11/10 Algeria
-03/11/10 Bahrain
-03/11/10 Egypt
-03/11/10 Iran
-03/11/10 Iraq
-03/11/10 Israel and the occupied territories
-03/11/10 Jordan
-03/11/10 Kuwait
-03/11/10 Lebanon
-03/11/10 Libya
-03/11/10 Morocco
-03/11/10 Western Sahara
-03/11/10 Oman
-03/11/10 Qatar
-03/11/10 Saudi Arabia
-03/11/10 Syria
-03/11/10 Tunisia
-03/11/10 United Arab Emirates
-03/11/10 Yemen

South and Central Asia
-03/11/10 Afghanistan
-03/11/10 Bangladesh
-03/11/10 Bhutan
-03/11/10 India
-03/11/10 Kazakhstan
-03/11/10 Kyrgyz Republic
-03/11/10 Maldives
-03/11/10 Nepal
-03/11/10 Pakistan
-03/11/10 Sri Lanka
-03/11/10 Tajikistan
-03/11/10 Turkmenistan
-03/11/10 Uzbekistan

Western Hemisphere
-03/11/10 Antigua and Barbuda
-03/11/10 Argentina
-03/11/10 Bahamas, The
-03/11/10 Barbados
-03/11/10 Belize
-03/11/10 Bolivia
-03/11/10 Brazil
-03/11/10 Canada
-03/11/10 Chile
-03/11/10 Colombia
-03/11/10 Costa Rica
-03/11/10 Cuba
-03/11/10 Dominica
-03/11/10 Dominican Republic
-03/11/10 Ecuador
-03/11/10 El Salvador
-03/11/10 Grenada
-03/11/10 Guatemala
-03/11/10 Guyana
-03/11/10 Haiti
-03/11/10 Honduras
-03/11/10 Jamaica
-03/11/10 Mexico
-03/11/10 Nicaragua
-03/11/10 Panama
-03/11/10 Paraguay
-03/11/10 Peru
-03/11/10 Saint Kitts and Nevis
-03/11/10 Saint Lucia
-03/11/10 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
-03/11/10 Suriname
-03/11/10 Trinidad and Tobago
-03/11/10 Uruguay
-03/11/10 Venezuela

Appendices
-03/11/10 Appendix A: Notes on Preparation of Report
-03/11/10 Appendix B: Reporting on Worker Rights
-03/11/10 Appendix C: Selected International Human Rights Conventions [1187 Kb]
-03/11/10 Appendix D: Description of International Human Rights Conventions in Appendix C
-03/11/10 Appendix E: FY 2009 Foreign Assistance Actuals [581 Kb]
-03/11/10 Appendix F: UN General Assembly's Third Committee Country Resolution Votes 2009 [253 Kb]
-03/11/10 Appendix G: United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Related Material
-03/11/10 Remarks to the Press on the Release of the 2009 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices; Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; Washington, DC
-03/02/10 2009 Human Rights Report; Acting Assistant Secretary Karen Stewart, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; Washington, DC

Obama outlines strategy to boost US exports -- and jobs

Obama is ordering the creation of an ‘export promotion cabinet’ – one of several things he described in a speech Thursday in an effort to double US exports. The goal is to create 2 million jobs within the next five years.

President Barack Obama speaks at the Export-Import Bank's Annual Conference in Washington, Thursday. He ordered the creation of a high-level team to promote US exports, with the goal of creating 2 million jobs.
(Charles Dharapak/AP)

By Mark Trumbull Staff writer
posted March 11, 2010 at 3:17 pm EST

President Obama moved Thursday to create a high-level team to promote US exports, with the goal of creating 2 million jobs within the next five years.

The project will span from efforts to reduce hurdles for companies in shipping goods overseas, to adjusting trade policy with a blend of carrots (a push for new free-trade agreements) and sticks (tougher enforcement of trade rules). The near-term goal is to double US exports within five years.

"For the first time, the United States of America is launching a single, comprehensive strategy to promote American exports," Mr. Obama told the annual conference of the Export-Import Bank, an institution in Washington designed to promote US trade.

Getting that many more jobs from exports won't be easy, but new efforts on trade are very much needed, economists say. The most obvious reason is that America needs more jobs, at a time when consumer demand at home remains tepid. A second reason is that the world economy continues to become more competitive, which means that the US can't rest on its laurels as the world’s leading exporter of goods and services.

"Ninety-five percent of the world’s customers and the world’s fastest-growing markets are outside our borders. We need to compete for those customers. Because other nations are," Obama said. "We need to up our game."

Obama outlined a multipart "national export initiative":

• He signed an executive order "instructing the federal government to use every available federal resource" to boost exports. The order created an "export promotion cabinet," made up of the secretaries of State, Treasury, Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor, plus the US trade representative and other officials.

• He revived a separate body, called the President’s Export Council, and named Boeing CEO Jim McNerney and Xerox CEO Ursula Burns as co-chairs. The panel will make recommendations on trade policy.

• Multiple cabinet departments will help create a "one-stop shop" for small employers that want help identifying opportunities and setting up operations overseas. The effort would include embassies and consulates abroad, as well as agencies like the Departments of Agriculture and Commerce.

• Obama pledged to promote new free-trade agreements while also enforcing laws on the books, such as intellectual-property rights. "China moving to a more market-oriented exchange rate would make an essential contribution" to a more-balanced global economy, he said. That move could also help narrow the large gap by which US imports exceed exports.

• The administration will increase access to trade financing. Obama commended efforts by the Export-Import Bank over the past year to step up its activities when US credit markets were impaired.

In addition, Obama pledged to be a kind of salesman in chief for US companies, with him and his cabinet members plugging the virtues of "made in America" when they travel overseas. Next week, the president will take his export evangelism to Indonesia and Australia.

The announcement about export strategy came as a government report showed a narrower-than-expected trade deficit for the US in January. Imports exceeded exports by $37.3 billion, with the volume of oil and automobile imports falling for the month.

Obama first announced the goal of doubling exports within five years during his State of the Union address to Congress in January.

Some economists, running the numbers, have said it's a difficult objective to reach.

"During the last 25 years nominal exports never grew this quickly in five years; it took an average of 11 years for exports to double," economist Sven Jari Stehn wrote in an analysis for Goldman Sachs.

Hitting the goal, he estimated, would require a combination of strong global economic growth and an adjustment of the dollar's value relative to currencies such as China's yuan.

"If global real GDP grew by an above-consensus 4.5 percent during the next five years, the dollar would still need to depreciate by about 30 percent, slightly more than the largest 5-year real depreciation on record during the last 25 years," Mr. Stehn concluded.

This doesn't mean that Obama's target is unreachable, however. And efforts to boost exports and achieve a more-balanced global economy could bring benefits even if his goal isn't reached.

Barcelona Journal - Trumpeting Catalan on the Big Screen

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By JOHN TAGLIABUE

BARCELONA, Spain — Here in the principal city of Catalonia, the native language, Catalan, is heard just about everywhere except in the movies. But that may be about to change because the local government is expected to pass a bill requiring that at least half the copies of every film from outside Europe, including all major American productions, be dubbed in Catalan.

That prompted 576 of the 790 movie houses in Catalonia, a region slightly bigger than Maryland, to close for a day last month in protest.

Industry leaders recalled that Catalonia’s government, which enjoys a broad measure of autonomy from Madrid, made a similar proposal in 1998 but backed down in the face of opposition from theater owners, film distributors and foreign production companies. “They say it’s necessary for the government to make a rule, because the private sector doesn’t do it,” said Camilo Tarrazón Rodón, president of the Association of Film Businesses in Catalonia, which opposes the bill.

Film attendance has declined in recent years, he said, with the exception of an uptick last year thanks to the arrival of digital and 3-D. “Banks are not lending, companies have business problems and kids look at films on cellphones,” Mr. Tarrazón said. “How can we pay for it?”

With an influx of immigrants to prosperous Catalonia — about one million of the 7.3 million population are newcomers — the region has been struggling to maintain what it considers its Catalonian soul. The bill is but the latest attempt to assert Catalan culture and its language — similar to Spanish, but also to French and Italian — yet with its own history, poets and prose writers.

By law, schoolchildren are required to receive their education in Catalan. In a further blow to Spanish culture, a referendum before the Catalan Parliament would end bullfighting, another Spanish passion, here altogether.

The draft film law comes at a time of deep uncertainty for the central government in Madrid, which is struggling with a severe economic crisis and high unemployment. But it also highlights Barcelona’s curious role in Spanish culture, even as it seeks to assert its distinctness.

Oddly, Barcelona is the capital of Spain’s publishing industry, and roughly three-fourths of all books purchased in the region are in Spanish, said Joan Manuel Tresserras, 55, a former communications professor who is now the Catalan culture minister. Half of all radio programs are heard in Catalan and a majority of plays in the city’s theaters, with the exception of musicals, are in Catalan.

“We think we need a more diverse cinematic culture, a wider range of opportunities,” he said, seated under two big canvases by the 20th-century Catalan painter Miquel Barceló. Under Franco, the use of Catalan was discouraged, Mr. Tresserras said. That eased after Franco’s death in 1975, but even two years later, Mr. Tresserras, then serving in the army, said he spent three days in solitary confinement after officers overheard him speaking Catalan.

Mr. Tresserras says moviegoers do not go to films in Catalan because so few are shown — about 3 percent of all movies — that they are not aware they might have that alternative. But theater owners and distributors say there are few films in Catalan because moviegoers do not want them.

The magazine Cineytele said that in tests at a multiplex in Barcelona, only 12 of 131 moviegoers chose Catalan when offered the choice of seeing the same foreign film in that or Spanish.

Not everyone is convinced. “Most theater is in Catalan, and there are no complaints,” said Rosanna Rion, 46, who grew up speaking Catalan and teaches English at Barcelona University. “These tests — I’m not so sure about them.”

What major film producers, including American majors, have told the government here is that they fear, in addition to the additional cost, a possible knock-on effect. “They fear that Galicia or the Basque countries, or even the Bretons or Corsica, in France, could be next,” said Joan Antoni Gonzáles, 61, who is secretary general of Catalonia’s Federation of Audiovisual Producers, which last year broke away from Spain’s national organization. The draft law would not affect films that were shot in Spanish, or European films unless more than 15 copies are circulated, so the brunt will clearly be felt by American productions.

Mr. Gonzáles says he believes that Parliament will “make the law sweeter for the majors,” possibly by having the government pay for the dubbing — a task made easier by the introduction of digitalized films. Last year, box office revenue at Catalonia’s film theaters rose by almost 10 percent, thanks mainly to the introduction of digital and 3-D blockbusters like “Avatar,” he said.

He cited a recent film, “Elegy,” by the Catalan director Isabel Coixet, an adaptation of a Philip Roth novel in which a college teacher becomes obsessed with a student, played by Penélope Cruz. “Elegy,” he said, was shown in seven theaters in the original English with Catalan subtitles, and was a total success.

Some visitors to Barcelona feel the city is sufficiently cosmopolitan to absorb any languages. “Most of my courses are in Spanish, though my American literature courses are in English,” said Luigi Suardi, 23, an Italian exchange student at Barcelona University. He said his friends spoke a mix of Spanish and Catalan. “People living in Barcelona don’t have strong feelings” about language, he said, adding, “It’s difficult for small countries.”

Enric Juste, 33, a documentary filmmaker, said that above all, Catalonia lacked original films with subtitles. “There is no tradition here of using subtitles,” he said. “People are not used to such films.”

He favors the draft law, dismissing critics who say films in Catalan do not draw viewers. “But there are so few films in Catalan, you’re talking about a situation that, at the moment, is fiction; you cannot talk about a situation that doesn’t exist.”

Nigerians Recount Night of Their Bloody Revenge

Image by Travelling Steve via Flickr

By ADAM NOSSITER

JOS, Nigeria — Dispassionately, the baby-faced young man recounted his killings: two women and one man, first beaten senseless with a stick, then stabbed to death with a short knife.

The man, Dahiru Adamu, 25, was crouching on the floor in the sprawling police headquarters here, summoned to give an accounting of the terrible night of March 7, when, he said, he and dozens of other herdsmen descended on a slumbering village just south of here and slaughtered hundreds with machetes, knives and cutlasses in a brutal act of sectarian retribution.

On Monday and Tuesday, 332 bodies were buried in a mass grave in the village of Dogo Na Hawa, the Nigerian Red Cross said Wednesday. Human rights groups and the state government say that as many as 500 people may have been killed in the early hours of Sunday morning, in three different villages.

Sunday’s killings were an especially vicious expression of long-running hostilities between Christians and Muslims in this divided nation. Jos and the region around it are on the fault line where the volatile and poor Muslim north and the Christian south meet. In the past decade, some 3,000 people have been killed in interethnic, interreligious violence in this fraught zone. The pattern is familiar and was seen as recently as January: uneasy coexistence suddenly explodes into killing, amplified for days by retaliation.

Mr. Adamu, a Muslim herder, said he went to Dogo Na Hawa, a village of Christians living in mud-brick houses on dirt streets, to avenge the killings of Muslims and their cattle in January.

The operation had been planned at least several days before by a local group called Thank Allah, said one of Mr. Adamu’s fellow detainees, Ibrahim Harouna, who was shackled on the floor next to him. The men spoke in Hausa through an interpreter.

“They killed a lot of our Fulanis in January,” Mr. Adamu said, referring to his ethnic group. “So I knew that this time, we would take revenge.”

His victims were sleeping when he arrived, he said, and he set their house on fire. Sure enough, they ran out.

“I killed three people,” Mr. Adamu said calmly.

He and the other detainees showed no sign that they had been maltreated; some confessed to killings, and others denied them, speaking in front of the police.

The police quickly arrested about 200 people in connection with the killings, and many of them were crouching anxiously in rows on a bare concrete floor, outside the police headquarters on Wednesday morning. The police have confiscated 14 machetes, 26 bows, arrows, 3 axes, 4 spears and 44 guns. Victims, many of them women and children, were cut down with knives, short and long; few survived.

Usually in such attacks, there are twice as many injuries as deaths, said Ben Whitfield of the Doctors Without Borders team in Jos. “It’s unreal,” he said. “These people were definitely caught in the middle of the night and meant to be killed.” Like others in Jos, police officials say they are hoping for peace after years of sectarian killings in the region.

But they are not sure they will get it. The streets in this metropolis of several million were largely deserted Wednesday. Residents spoke of fear and anger, and about 4,300 have fled.

Christians, in interviews, voiced suspicion of the intentions of Muslims and associated them with the taint of terrorism. The state attorney general, Edward Pwajok, a Christian, said that on Wednesday morning he had prosecuted a Nigerian Muslim man living in a Jos suburb who had “acknowledged” being “a member of Al Qaeda.”

Mr. Pwajok said there was no indication that the man, Samsudeen Sahsu, was connected to the killings; he said DVDs of Al Qaeda’s activities had been discovered in the man’s home. The group is not previously known to have penetrated Nigeria, though Mr. Sahsu, in a written confession provided by the attorney general, named other members of the “AlKaida Islamic Association.”

He said the headquarters were in Maiduguri, where last summer a radical Islamic sect, Boko Haram, was bloodily suppressed by Nigerian security forces.

“Suspicion is still rife,” the state police commissioner, Ikechukwu Aduba, said in an interview in his office in Jos. “We are appealing to the youth to sheath their swords and give peace a chance.”

Mr. Aduba sharply disputed the elevated death toll reported by others, saying that the police could confirm only 109 deaths.

But a Nigerian Red Cross official in Jos, Adeyemo Adebayo, deputy head of disaster management, said that the number of dead was “possibly” even greater than the 332 buried in the mass grave, since many fled into the bush and could have been cut down there by their attackers. A respected Nigerian human rights group, the Civil Rights Congress, said Monday that its members had counted 492 bodies.

Their attackers had come on foot from nearby villages and had made no preparations for a getaway, said Adebola Hamzat, chief superintendent of the Jos police. “Many of them were still running around,” he said, when they were picked up by the security forces. And many were carrying “cutlasses” — long lethal-looking knives that the police produced for visitors on Wednesday — still stained with blood, he said.

“The person was coming toward me; I killed him with a cutlass,” said the young man next to Mr. Adamu, Zakaria Yakubu, 20, insisting that he was defending a fellow Fulani who had been shot. His victim “did not die right away,” Mr. Yakubu said. “When we got to Dogo Na Hawa, we were just looking for our cattle.” He was clutching some bread distributed by the Red Cross.

Next to him, Ibrahim Harouna, also 20, would say only that he had “killed some of the people’s pigs,” though the police said he was also suspected of having taken part in the killings.

On Wednesday, the mood in Jos was tense among Muslim traders, who complained of a sharp drop in business, and it was anything but forgiving among Christians. They complained that Muslims wanted to supplant “indigenes” — Christians long native to the region.

“Some people want to be rulers everywhere,” said Yohanna Yatou, a businessman. “It’s the Muslims. They said they are born to rule.” Williams Danladi said that Muslims “believe that if they die during this war, they will go to heaven.”

“We Christians, we don’t believe this,” he said.

Others expressed puzzlement and exasperation with the never-ending conflict. “This is a Christian, an indigene,” said Moussa Ismail, pointing to his friend sitting next to him on a downtown stoop, Jacob Ayuba. “We have done business for more than 20 years. How would I attack him?”

Births to Minorities Are Approaching Majority in U.S.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

By SAM ROBERTS

In the latest sign of the nation’s shifting racial and ethnic composition, births to Asian, black and Hispanic women in the United States are on the verge of surpassing births to non-Hispanic whites.

Minorities accounted for 48 percent of all births in the nation in the 12 months ending July 2008. While it will most likely take years for health statisticians to confirm precisely when the 50 percent benchmark will have been reached, demographers said it could occur this year. Depending on variables like the recession, which has depressed birth rates, it will almost certainly happen within a year or two, they said.

“It looks like ‘majority’ births would drop below 50 percent around 2012,” said Carl Haub, senior demographer for the Population Reference Bureau.

As recently as 1990, non-Hispanic whites accounted for almost two-thirds of births.

The Census Bureau has estimated that minorities will constitute a majority of the nation’s overall population in about three decades and a majority of Americans under age 18 in about one decade.

Since 2000 alone, the proportion of people under age 20 who are non-Hispanic whites dipped to 57 percent, from 61 percent. In 2008, Asian, black and Hispanic children already made up 47 percent of the population under 5 years old.

A study released this week by Professors Kenneth M. Johnson of the University of New Hampshire and Daniel Lichter of Cornell University explored why younger Americans are at the forefront of racial and ethnic changes and what those changes augur, compared with a generation ago.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

“The social and economic realities of children had deteriorated, while the circumstances of the elderly had improved,” they write in the journal Population and Development Review. “Will America’s older, largely white population — through the ballot box and collective self-interest — support young people who are now much different culturally from themselves and their own children? Will they vote, for example, to raise taxes for schools that serve young people of ethnic backgrounds different from theirs?”

Even though immigration has declined from earlier projections, other variables are contributing to the racial and ethnic shift.

Among them are a decline in the number of non-Hispanic white and even black children; white and Asian birthrates below the replacement level, which magnifies the impact of higher Hispanic birthrates and immigration; and declining numbers of non-Hispanic white women of child-bearing age (down 6 percent since 2000), while the number of Hispanic women in that category climbed 21 percent. There were about 10 Hispanic births in a recent year for each Hispanic death.

“The big drop in white child-bearing age is probably only beginning to be fully felt in the number of white births, so they may drop more,” said Professor Johnson, who is the senior demographer at New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute. “In contrast, the rapid rise in the number of minority women — especially Hispanics — is likely to push minority births up.”

The vast majority of children in the three major minority groups are not immigrants, and the share of Hispanic children who were born abroad may have peaked. Still, only 39 percent of Hispanic children under 4 years old have two native-born parents.

Driven to Distraction - Distracted Driving in Ambulances and Police Cruisers

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By MATT RICHTEL

They are the most wired vehicles on the road, with dashboard computers, sophisticated radios, navigation systems and cellphones.

While such gadgets are widely seen as distractions to be avoided behind the wheel, there are hundreds of thousands of drivers — police officers and paramedics — who are required to use them, sometimes at high speeds, while weaving through traffic, sirens blaring.

The drivers say the technology is a huge boon for their jobs, saving valuable seconds and providing instant access to essential information. But it also presents a clear risk — even the potential to take a life while they are trying to save one.

Philip Macaluso, a New York paramedic, recalled a moment recently when he was rushing to the hospital while keying information into his dashboard computer. At the last second, he looked up from the control panel and slammed on his brakes to avoid a woman who stepped into the street.

“There is a potential for disaster here,” Mr. Macaluso said. Data does not exist about crashes caused by police officers or medics distracted by their devices. But there are tragic anecdotes.

In April 2008, an emergency medical technician in West Nyack, N.Y., looked at his GPS screen, swerved and hit a parked flatbed truck. The crash sheared off the side of the ambulance and left his partner, who was in the passenger seat, paralyzed.

In June 2007, a sheriff’s deputy in St. Clair County, Ill., was driving 35 miles per hour when a dispatcher radioed with an assignment. He entered the address into the mapping system and then looked up, too late to avoid hitting a sedan stopped in traffic. Its driver was seriously injured.

Ambulances and police cars are becoming increasingly wired. Some 75 percent of police cruisers have on-board computers, a figure that has doubled over the last decade, says David Krebs, an industry analyst with the VDC Research Group. He estimates about 30 percent of ambulances have such technology.

The use of such technology by so-called first responders comes as regulators, legislators and safety advocates seek to limit the use of gadgets by most drivers. Police officers, medics and others who study the field say they are searching to find the right balance between technology’s risks and benefits.

The computers allow police, for example, to check license plate data, find information about a suspect and exchange messages with dispatchers. Ambulances receive directions to accident scenes and can use the computers to send information about the patient before they arrive at hospitals.

“The technology is enormously beneficial,” said Jeffrey Lindsey, a retired fire chief in Florida who now is an executive at the Health and Safety Institute, which provides continuing education for emergency services workers.

But he said first responders generally did not have enough training to deal with diversions that could be “almost exponential” compared with those faced by most drivers.

The New York Fire Department, which coordinates the city’s largest ambulance system, said drivers were not supposed to use on-board computers in traffic. That is the role of the driver’s partner, and if the partner is in the back tending to a patient, the driver is supposed to use devices before speeding off.

“There’s no need for our drivers to get distracted, because the system has evolved to keep safety paramount,” said Jerry Gombo, assistant chief for emergency service operations at the Fire Department. Drivers do get into accidents, he said, but he couldn’t remember a single one caused by distraction from using a computer.

He also estimates the technology saves 20 to 30 seconds per call. “There’s no doubt we’re having quicker response time,” Mr. Gombo added.

But in interviews, medics and E.M.T.’s in New York and elsewhere say that although they are aware of the rules, they do use their on-board computers while driving because they can’t wait for certain information.

States that ban drivers from texting or using hand-held phones tend to exempt first responders. And in many places where even they are forbidden to use cellphones behind the wheel, the edict is often ignored.

“My partner was checking baseball scores as he was driving a patient to the hospital. I looked through the passageway and said, ‘You’ve got to stop that right now,’ ” recalls Greg Friese, a paramedic in central Wisconsin, who was treating a patient in the back. Mr. Friese also develops online training programs for medics, E.M.T.’s, police officers and firefighters.

“We’re dealing with the carnage, which ranges from the trivial to the tragic, of distracted driving,” he said. “We should know better.”

For police officers, there are reasons to constantly be checking a dashboard computer. They might check a license plate of a car they are tailing by using a keyboard to call up a screen, typing in the plate number, then reading more about the owner.

“There’s no way you could do this without eventually running into something,” said Officer Shawn Chase, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol, as he demonstrated use of the Gateway computer in a cruiser. And yet, he said, he has tried it, and others have, too.

“The first time you almost rear-end something, you say, ‘Whoa, I better not do this,’ ” he said. “You learn quick.”

Researchers are working to reduce the risk. At the University of New Hampshire, backed by $34 million in federal financing, they have been developing hands-free technology for police cars.

The systems let officers use voice commands to operate the radio, lights and sirens and even speak a license-plate number into the on-board computer, which can then announce through a speaker basic information about the car. To activate voice commands, the officer must push a button on the steering wheel.

“I can literally drive down the road, speak without holding the microphone, and turn on the lights and sirens without ever looking at the equipment,” said Captain John G. LeLacheur of the New Hampshire State Police, who has driven one of the 1,000 police cruisers nationwide, mostly in New Hampshire and other Northeast states, equipped with the new technology.

Mr. LeLacheur said it sometimes failed to pick up his voice. “If it’s not doing what I want, I bypass it and do things the old-fashioned way,” he said.

Another system uses digital video systems that can automatically read license plates in front of and behind police cruisers, and then check for things like unregistered plates and stolen vehicles.

The solutions aren’t cheap, particularly for struggling state and local governments. A license-plate reader system from Panasonic can cost $8,000 for each car, including a $3,000 to $5,000 laptop.

“We can barely get patrol cars and motorcycles,” said Mr. Chase of the California Highway Patrol. Referring to the hands-free devices, he said, “We’ve love to get this technology, but there are trade-offs.”