NEWS ALERT: Asmara Detains 30 Christian Women, Group Says
December 7, 2009
Security forces in Eritrea have detained dozens, mostly elderly, Christian women in the capital Amara as part of a crackdown on evangelical activities, an advocacy group said Monday, December 7.
Source: http://www.worthynews.com/7038-news-alert-asmara-detains-30-christian-women-group-says
NEWS ALERT: Asmara Detains 30 Christian Women, Group Says
Posted on: 2009-12-07 02:57:19 By Worthy News Africa Service
ASMARA, ERITREA (Worthy News)-- Security forces in Eritrea have detained dozens, mostly elderly, Christian women in the capital Amara as part of a crackdown on evangelical activities, an advocacy group said Monday, December 7.
Source: http://www.christianpersecution.info/index.php?view=7038
. . . The U.S. Department of State in its 2002 report on religious freedom in Eritrea reported:
"The Government instituted new restrictions on religious groups known collectively as 'Pentes.' Pentes include all groups that do not belong to the four principal religions--Orthodox Christian, Muslim, Catholic, and Evangelical Christian--such as Pentecostals, Born Again Christians, Seventh-Day Adventists, Baha'is, Buddhists, and other Protestants. In 2001 the Government began closing Pente facilities. Following a May 2002 government decree that all religious groups must register or cease all religious activities, all religious facilities not belonging to the four principal religions were closed by the end of the period covered by this report. The Government also continued to harass, detain, and discriminate against members of the small community of Jehovah's Witnesses" (USDOS 7 Oct 2002). [1]
Source: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,USCIS,,ERI,,3f5209b84,0.html
That last source not only provides a citation record for itself, but it notes the date on which reader accessed it.
Finally:
NAIROBI, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Eritrea said on Thursday it was not aware of reports of an alleged mass arrest of Christians that a rights group says took place in the capital Asmara last weekend.
Eritrea's Information Minister Ali Abdu told Reuters by phone that he had not seen any reports of arrests and that any arrests would not have been religiously motivated.
Source: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/GEE5B90SO.htm
Ah, the blogger's second row seat to history, which may not be far from the seats of analysts elsewhere mining similar compilations, has its many joys.
Without being told, you should see the problem I do, but you may not see it the same way I do.
First, let me list the information path and motivation for interest.
1. Reuters AlertNet's list service has sent me e-mail with this teaser: "Eritrea says not aware of mass arrest of Christians http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/GEE5B90SO.htm."
2. Using Google's search engine, I track for "Asmara Christian Persecution", and that returns the UNHCR bulletin from January 2003 ("last accessed December 10, 2009"), which is really a Homeland Security Document--at least it carries the logo plus a bureau imprimatur), and which in turn has its own contributing rivulets.
3. Heading to the source of AlertNet's conveyance, "christianpersecution.info" in the U.S. credits "worthynews.com" reporting from Africa with the story, which Worthy News credits to Christian Persecution.
A simple byline and an e-mail address would be helpful at this stage of sniffing the story to see if there really is a story.
I certainly do believe that from Bethlehem in the Palestinian occupation or quasi-democratic ersatz provisional thugocracy to Lahore, Pakistan, that Christians do indeed face persecution for beliefs and activities undertaken in the name of Christ in Muslim-majority lands, but Eritrea, a less aligned dictatorship, may have a different interest in the control of Christian enthusiasms:
--In 2002, government spokespersons began comparing Pentecostal/charismatic and evangelical churches with Islamists and branded them a danger to national security.
--As a consequence of this, all churches not belonging to the Orthodox, Catholic or Lutheran denominations in Eritrea were ordered to close in May 2002. [1]
Dictatorships serve the dictator, in Eritrea, Isaias Aferwerki who led the ranks in breaking away from Ethiopia and has presided provisionally since May 1993, and the same does not need his job made any more difficult than it already is.
Human curiosity and the Internet being what they are, search string "eritrea religious freedom" yields quite a different view of this issue:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=1&oq=Eritrea+religious&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4SUNA_enUS250US250&q=eritrea+religious+freedom
In 2007, the Catholic News Agency conveyed this hearsay, "The expulsion of 14 Catholic missionaries from Eritrea two days ago is part of a plan of the Maoist dictatorship of President Isaias Afewerkito to destroy the Catholic Church in Eritrea, reports CISA": http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=10989.
A Voice of America opinion piece had this to note earlier this past year:
The Eritrean government severely restricts freedom of religion for groups that it has not registered and infringes on the independence of its registered groups. Following a 2002 decree that religious groups must register, the government closed all religious facilities not belonging to the country’s four main religious communities: the Eritrean Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Eritrea, and Islam.
The Eritrean government continues to harass, arrest, detain, torture, and kill members of evangelical groups, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and a reform movement within the Eritrean Orthodox Church. The government has failed to grant registration to any religious groups that applied for it in 2002. Religious meetings are restricted, and individuals are arrested during religious ceremonies, gatherings, and prayer meetings in private homes.
For religious zealots of both Christian and Muslim faith, Eritrea would seem ripe for picking on and for prosyletizing. Where are the mujahiddeen of Eritrea? Well here is the voice of one by proxy:
After the colonial powers such as Britain, France and the Netherlands withdrew in the 1950s and '60s, most African countries fell into the hands of communist or fascist dictatorships. Most of these post-colonial regimes followed a policy of systematic intimidation of Muslims, and indeed are still doing so."
Source: http://www.harunyahya.com/spring10.php
I'll take Harun Yahya, a Turkish intellectual, at his word. On the same page, he goes on to assert this:
One of the reasons for the endless conflict, anarchy and war in Eritrea, one of the poorest regions in the world despite its socio-economic and geo-strategic importance, is the strategy of countries that dominate regional policies there, which is based on their own interests, totally ignoring the needs and demands of the people living in this region. Israel comes first among these countries.
Previous Ethiopian and Eritrean regimes had only one thing in common with the state of Israel: their anti-Islamic line. As we saw at the beginning of this book, Israel sees Islam as the greatest danger to its dominance over the Middle East, itself built on cruelty, violation and oppression. That is why there is always an Israeli presence in all regions where Muslims are oppressed and face extinction, from Bosnia to the Philippines, from East Turkestan to Eritrea. In his book The Israeli Connection: Who Arms Israel and Why? Professor Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi of Israel's Haifa University characterizes such activities by his country all over the world over as "Israel's world war." As prominent Israeli newspaper columnist Nahum Barnea has noted, "Israel will become the Western vanguard in the war against the Islamic enemy.'"
What happened to the Maoists, the godless, the People of the Little Red Book?
I don't know, and I would well invite Harun Yahya to survey and detail the architecture of ideological thought and practice within Isaias Aferwerki's regime.
Oddly, Eritrea has for several years been linked to the conveyance of arms to Islamist anti-government insurgents in Somalia.
Try swallowing this from an Al Jazeera story on a UN Security Council report:
In an accusation backed by some security experts and diplomats, Somalia's government said earlier this month that Eritrea continues to support al Shabab fighters with AK-47 assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons.
Eritrea rejects the accusations that it sends weapons to the al Qaeda-linked groups fighting Somalia's government.
Source: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2009/05/200951603447360512.html
And, of course, Eritrea doesn't persecute Christians and Muslims either.
Autocratic institutions and private kingdoms produce themselves, if you will, out of the light.
Burma, Cameroon, Phillipinnes, Zimbabwe, Iran, Eritrea may differ in atmosphere or cultural flavor, but they are all alike, and we, a global readership, may confuse ourselves with the vestigial alliances with which we have previously filtered our perception of events elsewhere and not yet vigorously drilled down to the core drivers of conflicts and of the world's tyrannies.
I am Jewish and I am pro-Israel and pro-Israeli, and with that comes the inclination, perhaps the obligation, by no means exclusive, to look into the darker regions, geopolitical and psychological, and contribute to the illumination of their gears and hinges. Whether the most adverse of human processes are anchored in language, so much a part of the Islamic Small Wars, or in behaviors so myopic and narrowed to me and mine as to debase and dehumanize you and yours, which may indeed form the basis of a case against the west, I want to see certain inner workings, and I want you to see that intellectual and social machinery with me.
It is a hard thing transporting the better values of cultures and religions into more honest and noble alignments, but the ends cannot be otherwise in a globally and vigorously communicating social environment.
Cited Reference
Note: without question and neither to detriment nor honor, I write as I discover--definitely not a 19th Century research method here--and try for some control by keeping narrow in my interests and consequently able to recover information of which I've made myself aware and carry that into an integrating and synthesizing communication. Above I've provided short reference inline for most quotations and hope that will suffice for readers surfing off on relevant tangents.
1. Department of Homeland Security, United States Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. "Eritrea: Information on the Persecution of Evangelical Christians in Asmara, Eritrea." January 28, 2003, ERI03002.ZAR, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3f5209b84.html [accessed 10 December 2009]
Other Reference
YNet News. "Eritrea's Last Native Jew Tends Graves, Remembers." Jewish Scene, January 5, 2006: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3246419,00.html
End Plate
Mendacity! Do you know what that is?
It's lies and liars!
Who's been lying to you? Maggie?
No, not one lie or one person.
The whole thing.
Source: Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/c/cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof-script.html
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