The World Council of Churches
(WCC)  on Small Arms Control

KOBIA EXPRESSES
DEEP SORROW
AT VIRGINIA KILLINGS,
ASKS FOR MORE CONTROLS
ON SMALL ARMS
 

The World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia has expressed "deep sorrow" over "this new horror of random violence" that took place at Virginia Tech University.

To his prayers for the families and the wounded, he adds international church concern for more effective regulation of firearms.

"Churches around the world join churches and councils of churches in the US in sending sympathies to those who are suffering, and in upholding parishes in Virginia in their ministry during these difficult days", says Kobia in a statement published today.

Kobia affirms that "In deference to those who have died and with concern for the future, we all must ask why such killings happen so easily.

Why are these incidents repeated as if there are no remedies?

"We are all Virginians in our sympathy, but many people around the world are also Virginians in their vulnerability to the misuse of unregulated guns", Kobia says.

"Wanton killings", "indiscriminate use of armed force" and "widespread availability of deadly weapons" are features of the Virginia tragedy but are also present daily in Darfur and in Iraq.

Kobia calls for "firm and appropriate controls" on the globalized trade in small arms. He notes, among other factors, that the "pro-gun position adopted by the US administration" has been "one of the major obstacles" to progress toward that goal.


___________
The full text of the WCC general secretary's statement is available at:

http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?id=3478

Additional information:
Juan Michel, +41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507

6363 media@wcc-coe.org


Sign up for WCC press releases at:

http://onlineservices.wcc-coe.org/pressnames.nsf



The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 347 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 560 million Christians in over 110 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia, from the Methodist Church in Kenya. Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland.

WCC ID:
nJoBWU5exi1qWrutF9UPe3zxFO1kvkS1
uXQ4WDHV1NjMpf3OQUc2W1yD9KlKiEs
 

A Triplex View of Israeli/Palestinian Problem

"If Israelis and Palestinians are unable to agree on their tragic mutual history, maybe they can benefit from learning how the other side views it. That, in a nutshell, is the premise behind a new series of workbooks, whose
third volume is to be published in the coming weeks, presenting the central historical narratives of Israelis and Palestinians side by side. "

"From the beginning of the workbook, the difficulty of bridging the two narratives becomes apparent. The Israeli side describes the birth of the Zionist movement in the 19th century, while the Palestinians begin much earlier, with Napoleon's plan in
1799 to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, "considered the first plan in the world of colonialist Jewish cooperation before the establishment of the Zionist movement." (Israeli sources doubt the reliability of this information.)"

"Reading the three workbooks consecutively will probably send the average Israeli reader back to the history books to check, for example, whether his or her main memory of the British Mandate, as almost every Israeli schoolchild declaims it, is the series of White Papers and limitations on Jewish immigration to Palestine - or perhaps, as the Palestinians tell it, the use by the Mandate of laws and regulations to help the developing Jewish economy at the expense of the Palestinian one. "

Editorial:
This is a fascinating attempt to gather and present critical opposing ideas into one series of workbooks for students. The resistance to these workbooks being used in Israeli and Palestinian classrooms is also telling. Besides Israel and Palestine, I would hope these workbooks, with their unique structure and sectarian histories, would be available in the US. Tangentially, many strong subjects might benefit from this triplex workbook concept.

Loch Sloy!
Tuan Today
"Tuan MacCarrill/MacParthalon, Forever the Celtic story!"
Lowell McFarland <lowell@optonline.net>
 

hen the Palestinian students saw this, they asked to block out the Israeli flag.
"It was hard for them to study from a workbook featuring the same flag as at the roadblocks," a teacher explains.

Immediate ban
It was agreed at the outset of the project not to ask for authorization from the Israeli or Palestinian education ministries. Thus, the heads of the Israeli Education Ministry under Limor Livnat, of the Likud, first heard about the initiative at the beginning of 2004, via a small item in the media.
They immediately banned it.
"You must instruct teachers that they are prohibited from teaching with this workbook in any way," the chairman of the ministry's pedagogic secretariat,
Prof. Yaakov Katz, wrote to the principals of the schools of some of the Israeli teachers.
"If they do not desist, I will be forced to take disciplinary action against them," he added.

Nevertheless, before the ban was issued, Rachel Zamir managed to teach the main elements of the first workbook for an entire year at the Rogozin school. She later used parts of the book as worksheets handed out to students.
Niv Kedar also used the material for history lessons.
Other Israeli teachers taught some of the material in their civics classes or homerooms.  In other cases, the workbooks were used in lessons taught in small groups during after school hours.

The Palestinian side also kept a low profile, with some Palestinian teachers using the workbooks in their classes.

"It isn't simple to teach Israeli history in a refugee camp," the Palestinian teacher says.
"You have to be very sensitive, and know how to insert the subject into the lesson.
I believe it can be done, but slowly.
The process will be completed only after the occupation ends," the teacher says.
"I tell my students that what the other side believes is important. I propose they think about Israeli history, look at the reality from other perspectives, without giving up Palestinian identity. Otherwise we will be Israeli."

Bar-On and Adwan already have their next targets in their sites: Increasing the number of Israeli and Palestinian teachers using the workbooks, and publishing them in a single volume and offering it to the Israeli and
Palestinian education ministries.
They also want to develop a Web site that will serve as a teacher's guide, featuring, among other things, suggested lesson plans, background material and teacher feedback.

In the past year, 14 teachers from each side have used the workbooks.
Prof. Adwan estimates that a few thousand Palestinians have been exposed to at least some of the content.
"There have been students who refused to study the Israeli narrative, and who left the classroom," he explains.
"Some said Israeli history is propaganda and twists what really happened. Others wondered if the Israelis really teach the Palestinian narrative. But there have also been more understanding responses."

According to Zamir, students very quickly grasp the basic idea of the project.
"Usually one lesson is enough for them to understand that every chapter in history has a number of points of view.
For me, as a history teacher, the very fact that students understand that one place can have two names depending on national allegiance, is already a success," she notes.

After studying the two narratives, the students in the younger classes are asked to write two articles, one for a Palestinian newspaper, the other for a Jewish one, before the establishment of the state; or to draw one poster
for Independence Day and one in memory of the Nakba.
At the end of each period of study, Kedar elicits feedback from his students.
He says almost all agree that the Palestinian narrative should be taught.
In answer to a question as to whether they were surprised at the narrative of the other side, many responded that it had a lot of logic. "If I were on the other side, I would want the same thing," one student wrote.
Another wrote, "I'm sure that if I were in their situation, without a state, I would behave in the same way."

At least on the Israeli side, it appears that most students did not change their essential positions.
One of Zamir's younger students wrote that the Palestinians "have always been violent toward us and attacks are nothing new.
This gives us the courage to fight."
In contrast, however, another student wrote that the study "caused me to understand them more.
Until now I thought only we were right, but now I understand what they are fighting for."
"Sometimes I wonder whether through these workbooks I am undermining 'the just cause' of Zionism among the students," Zamir says.
"But I believe that the Zionist narrative is deeply rooted in them from kindergarten. The conflict is harsh and the project does not blur it. On the contrary, perhaps it sharpens the differences. All in all we have planted a small seed that will grow in keeping with the desires and abilities of each student, and will make possible greater
psychological ability to compromise.




Haaretz invites you to send this article to a friend.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/846379.html
By Or Kashti

----------------------------------------------------------



World Council of Churches - News Release

Contact: +41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507 6363 media@wcc-coe.org For immediate release - 17/04/2007 01:54:32 PM

GREEN VIEWS

-------------------------------------------------
A different model of coexistence
Haaretz, Tel Aviv, Israel
Haaretz invites you to send this article to a friend.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/846379.html
By Or Kashti

If Israelis and Palestinians are unable to agree on their tragic mutual history, maybe they can benefit from learning how the other side views it.
That, in a nutshell, is the premise behind a new series of workbooks, whose third volume is to be published in the coming weeks, presenting the central historical narratives of Israelis and Palestinians side by side.

"This is history teaching at its best: presenting a number of points of view; learning that there is no one historical truth," says Rachel Zamir, a history teacher at Tel Aviv's Rogozin School, who tried out the books in her classes in previous years.
"The students understand the complexity simply and quickly, and their awareness expands to the existence of the 'other.' From my point of view, it is a success when the student asks who is right in this conflict - understanding that there is justice on both sides," Zamir adds.

When the final editing is completed, and the third workbook is published, an unusual project, started five years ago, will have reached completion.
The project was the brainchild of Dr. Dan Bar-On, of the department of behavioral sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and Prof. Sami Adwan, a lecturer in education at Bethlehem University.
The two head the Peace Research Institute in the Middle East (PRIME), an NGO founded in 1998 with the help of Germany's Peace Research Institute.

Few believed that Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian teachers from the territories would succeed in their attempt to write a study program together describing the Arab-Israeli conflict.

But despite the intifada, terror attacks and roadblocks - or perhaps because of them, as some of the participants say - the work was completed. Every page of the workbook is divided into three sections of equal size: the Israeli narrative on the right, the Palestinian on the left, and in the middle, empty lines for students to write their own reactions to the historical descriptions.

The first workbook started with the Balfour Declaration, in 1917.  The third ends with the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, seven years ago.

Reading the three workbooks consecutively will probably send the average Israeli reader back to the history books to check, for example, whether his or her main memory of the British Mandate, as almost every Israeli schoolchild declaims it, is the series of White Papers and limitations on Jewish immigration to Palestine - or perhaps, as the Palestinians tell it,
the use by the Mandate of laws and regulations to help the developing Jewish
economy at the expense of the Palestinian one.

18th century or 19th?

From the beginning of the workbook, the difficulty of bridging the two
narratives becomes apparent.
The Israeli side describes the birth of the Zionist movement in the 19th
century, while the Palestinians begin much earlier, with Napoleon's plan in
1799 to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, "considered the first plan in
the world of colonialist Jewish cooperation before the establishment of the
Zionist movement." (Israeli sources doubt the reliability of this
information.)

And so the history goes.
A long chain of death and destruction, seen through opposing points of view:
the "riots of 1920-1921," as opposed to the "popular uprisings of 1920"; the
"riots of 1929," versus the "1929 rebellion"; the "great Arab revolt of
1936-1939," in contrast to the "Al-Qassam rebellion"; the "War of
Independence," as opposed to "the Nakba [disaster] of 1948"; the wars of
1973, 1967, 1956 and 1982, the first intifada in 1987, the Oslo Accords, and
on to the outbreak of the second intifada (see box).

"Our goal is not to build a single agreed-on narrative; that is a mission
impossible," Prof. Bar-On says.
"The goal is to get to know and respect the narrative of the other, even if
we don't agree with everything it says.
Clearly this is not a process that will solve all the problems; many
dilemmas will remain.
But where have we ever heard of a Palestinian teaching about the Holocaust?"


"This is a different model of coexistence," Tel Aviv University historian
Prof. Eyal Naveh, academic advisor to the Israeli side, explains.
"All the other models are post-conflict, rebuilding history in a bridging
historical narrative.
Our model works differently.
During the conflict, both narratives in the workbook are supposed to carry
on a dialogue with each other through the empty lines.
This may bring about coexistence and perhaps also a reexamination of the
Israeli narrative."

Work on the project was full of crises.
First among these were the physical barriers imposed by the intifada.
Initially, the group would meet in various cities in the territories, but
the difficulty of movement for the Palestinians, due to the many roadblocks,
as well as the fear of some of the Israelis to enter the territories, led to
the holding of two-day meetings, one every few weeks, in East Jerusalem.

'I don't know who I am'

Over the years, some of the Palestinian teachers left the project.
In the preface to one of the workbooks, Adwan and Bar-On quote one of those
who left: "I do not know who I am.
I meet with Israeli teachers and we try to understand each other, but only a
few hours ago I was humiliated at a military roadblock."
Another teacher left after his brother was arrested by the security forces.
"But most of the teachers found that this is the right way from their point
of view to deal with the madness outside," Adwan says.

After overcoming logistical problems, participants faced a more serious
challenge: the writing process itself, with academic oversight provided by
professors Naveh and Adnan Musallam, who advised the Palestinian side.
The teachers worked in national and cross-national groups.
At the first stage each chapter was written by the Israelis and the
Palestinians separately; afterward the teachers discussed the different
versions. At the second stage, the draft underwent extensive discussion, in
which all the teachers took part.

Throughout the project, participants adhered to the principle on which
Bar-On and Adwan had decided at the beginning: No one had a veto over what
is written.
One could only explain one's opposition, debate it and hope that the other
side accepted the objections.

One of the first arguments that arose was over the chapter on the events of
1929.
"We brought the Palestinian description of the Hebron massacre," Rachel
Zamir says, "and they brought a similar story about an Arab family that was
killed in Jaffa by a Jewish policeman.
In the discussion that ensued, the point was made that this line of
description was not exactly what would lead to coexistence, but rather to a
perpetuation of the conflict, and maybe we should take out these
descriptions.
We accepted the comment and we gave up the bloody descriptions, and left
only the fact that there were killings.
The Palestinian teachers, however, did not change their style.
We thought perhaps we had made a mistake.
But I would probably make the same decision today."

Each summer the participants traveled abroad for longer seminars of a number
of days.
During the first three years, these were funded by the U.S. State
Department, which supported non-governmental peace initiatives after the
1998 Wye Plantation agreements.
Later, Bar-On and Adwan managed to get European Union funding for the
project, as well as assistance from the Ford Foundation and a number of
private donors.

In the summer of 2003 in Turkey, where a meeting took place on the second
volume, arguments about the 1967 War threatened to break the group apart.
The Israeli teachers defined the Palestinians' first draft as "a text that
would not pass in Israeli classrooms," and claimed that parts were not based
on solid historical evidence.
Zamir recalls a discussion among all the participants in which she expressed
doubts as to the value of continuing the project.
The Palestinians, for their part, argued that the Israelis were trying to
force their opinion on them.
In the end, the Palestinian narrative underwent some softening.

Debates continued over later chapters as well.
For example, the Palestinians wrote that the terror attacks on Israeli
targets in the 1970s (first and foremost Munich and Ma'alot) were for the
purpose of bargaining over prisoner release.
"But Israel's prime minister at that time refused the proposal, and in the
ensuing attack the kidnappers and the hostages were both killed."

"It was hard for me to hear these claims," says Niv Kedar, a history teacher
at the Givat Brenner regional high school.
"The message that emerges is that the rescue attempts and the lack of
willingness to release prisoners were the cause of the deaths.
I asked the Palestinian teachers if the kidnappers themselves bore no
responsibility for the deaths of the hostages.
The answer I got was that this message was 'between the lines.'"

Recognizing the Green Line

In another case, involving Operation Litani in 1978, the initial Palestinian
version stated that "the Palestinian presence in Lebanon was a source of
concern for the colonies in northern Palestine."
After a harsh confrontation, in which the Israeli teachers insisted on
differentiating between communities inside and outside the Green Line, the
words "colonies in northern Palestine" were replaced by "population
concentrations in northern Israel."
In parentheses, however, the Palestinians wrote that these were
"communities/settlements built on the ruins of Palestinian homes from 1948."


"The Israelis' use of the term Eretz Israel (Land of Israel) is strange for
me.
We know this place as 'Palestine,'" a Palestinian teacher says.
"On another occasion we described Haifa, Tel Aviv and Kiryat Shmona as
settlements.
There was a big argument and the Israelis explained their sensitivity to the
definition.
For us these are settlements, but in the end we decided to remove this
definition."

There were also arguments within the groups.
The Israeli teachers debated whether the chapter on "the War of
Independence" should relate in detail to the expulsion and flight of
Palestinian refugees, or whether this should only be mentioned, without
special emphasis.

In the end they decided to limit themselves to including only a few
paragraphs on the subject.
"We wanted to be relevant to Israeli society, to the age group of the
students," says Naveh.
"Therefore there was no choice but to use a middle-of-the-road narrative.
Except for a small group in the academia, post-Zionism does not speak to
Israeli society."

Similar questions arose in the Palestinian group regarding the actions of
the mufti of Jerusalem in the 1920s and '30s, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini; on
the extent to which the Arab countries were responsible for the refugee
problem; the Jordanian policy toward the refugees; and the Oslo Accords.

Prof. Adwan says: "This may be the starting point for a new historiography.
Nevertheless, it must be remembered that the Palestinians are still under
occupation; they do not feel secure enough to talk freely about various
points of view."

The first workbook came out in 2002, and about six teachers from each side
began to use it in some of their history classes, usually for older high
school students.
The pilot workbook featured small pictures of Israeli and Palestinian flags
at the top of every page.
When the Palestinian students saw this, they asked to block out the Israeli
flag.
"It was hard for them to study from a workbook featuring the same flag as at
the roadblocks," a teacher explains.

Immediate ban

It was agreed at the outset of the project not to ask for authorization from the Israeli or Palestinian education ministries.  Thus, the heads of the Israeli Education Ministry under Limor Livnat, of the Likud, first heard about the initiative at the beginning of 2004, via a
small item in the media.

They immediately banned it.

"You must instruct teachers that they are prohibited from teaching with this workbook in any way," the chairman of the ministry's pedagogic secretariat,
Prof. Yaakov Katz, wrote to the principals of the schools of some of the Israeli teachers.
"If they do not desist, I will be forced to take disciplinary action against them," he added.

Nevertheless, before the ban was issued, Rachel Zamir managed to teach the main elements of the first workbook for an entire year at the Rogozin
school.  She later used parts of the book as worksheets handed out to students.  Niv Kedar also used the material for history lessons. Other Israeli teachers taught some of the material in their civics classes
or homerooms. In other cases, the workbooks were used in lessons taught in small groups during after school hours.

The Palestinian side also kept a low profile, with some Palestinian teachers using the workbooks in their classes.

"It isn't simple to teach Israeli history in a refugee camp," the Palestinian teacher says.  "You have to be very sensitive, and know how to insert the subject into the lesson.
I believe it can be done, but slowly.
The process will be completed only after the occupation ends," the teacher says.
"I tell my students that what the other side believes is important. I propose they think about Israeli history, look at the reality from other perspectives, without giving up Palestinian identity. Otherwise we will be Israeli."

Bar-On and Adwan already have their next targets in their sites: Increasing the number of Israeli and Palestinian teachers using the workbooks, and
publishing them in a single volume and offering it to the Israeli and Palestinian education ministries.
They also want to develop a Web site that will serve as a teacher's guide, featuring, among other things, suggested lesson plans, background material
and teacher feedback.

In the past year, 14 teachers from each side have used the workbooks.  Prof. Adwan estimates that a few thousand Palestinians have been exposed to at least some of the content.
"There have been students who refused to study the Israeli narrative, and who left the classroom," he explains.
"Some said Israeli history is propaganda and twists what really happened. Others wondered if the Israelis really teach the Palestinian narrative. But there have also been more understanding responses."

According to Zamir, students very quickly grasp the basic idea of the project.
"Usually one lesson is enough for them to understand that every chapter in history has a number of points of view. For me, as a history teacher, the very fact that students understand that one place can have two names depending on national allegiance, is already a success," she notes.

After studying the two narratives, the students in the younger classes are asked to write two articles, one for a Palestinian newspaper, the other for a Jewish one, before the establishment of the state; or to draw one poster for Independence Day and one in memory of the Nakba.
At the end of each period of study, Kedar elicits feedback from his students.
He says almost all agree that the Palestinian narrative should be taught.
In answer to a question as to whether they were surprised at the narrative of the other side, many responded that it had a lot of logic.
"If I were on the other side, I would want the same thing," one student wrote.
Another wrote, "I'm sure that if I were in their situation, without a state, I would behave in the same way."

At least on the Israeli side, it appears that most students did not change their essential positions.
One of Zamir's younger students wrote that the Palestinians "have always been violent toward us and attacks are nothing new.  This gives us the courage to fight."

In contrast, however, another student wrote that the study "caused me to understand them more.
Until now I thought only we were right, but now I understand what they are fighting for."
"Sometimes I wonder whether through these workbooks I am undermining 'the just cause' of Zionism among the students," Zamir says.
"But I believe that the Zionist narrative is deeply rooted in them from kindergarten.

The conflict is harsh and the project does not blur it.
On the contrary, perhaps it sharpens the differences.
All in all we have planted a small seed that will grow in keeping with the desires and abilities of each student, and will make possible greater psychological ability to compromise.
 

Europe:
Pew Forum Event Transcript
Believing Without Belonging: Just How Secular Is Europe?
December 5, 2005
Key West, Florida

Click for more information on Ellenais


This story is partly based on the source material By Christine Pirovolakis Jan 22, 2007, © 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur and published on the Internet at http://lifestyle.monstersandcritics.com/religion/features/article_1249863.php/
Worshippers_fight_for_the_right_to_use_Greek_temples
 

The "Witch" Children of Angola:
The War Is Over But a New Horror Is Growing
By Rebecca

They are the criancas feiticeiras, the "child witches," the latest victims in Angola's degrading, agonizing civil war. The war supposedly ended two years ago, after twenty-seven years of conflict, with the assassination of rebel leader Jonas Savimbi. But the war left more than just buildings and streets and cities in ruins -- it left families broken, bodies malnourished, minds damaged, spirits wounded.

Thousands of children have been accused of witchcraft by their families. Abused, tortured, they are "fortunate" if they are only driven away from home. Helena Kufumana is one such fortunate "witch," a shy thirteen year-old in a "101 Dalmatians" T-shirt that is too big for her skinny body.

She cries.

In February, Helena was accused by her own parents of making her nieces ill by casting spells. Her hand was burned on a stove, her few clothes burned, and she was choked. Finally, her own mother and sisters beat her in public, and drove her from her home.

She cries. Like many such children, Helena has found refuge in a church shelter. "They tell me that if I try to come home they will kill me. They say I'm cursed."

WHAT IS HAPPENING

How many other children like Helena are "cursed" is impossible to say. Accused by their families of imagined acts of witchcraft, they are beaten, tortured, and sometimes killed. Human-rights workers, stunned by the large scale and maliciousness of the accusations and attacks, suspect that most of the children who wander the streest of Angola are just such criancas feiticeiras. Pariahs, they survive on scraps of food and hand-outs at markets. The luckier ones are taken in by churches and human-rights groups, where they are given regular meals and clean clothing -- but remain haunted by the accusations and torture.

The attacks on the "child witches" and the abuse inflicted on them, usually by their own families, is one of the most gruesome and deranged outbreaks of domestic violence in Africa in recent years. Human-rights activists seem at a loss to fully explain it.

"This is something new to us," says Matondo Alexandre of the United Nations Children's Fund. "In African culture it is usually the older people who are accused of practicing witchcraft. Now we're even seeing cases popping up involving babies."

WHY?

Why are so many Angolans turning on their own young, and in such a vicious manner, especially now? The war is over, finally. Why the torture and beatings when the people should be rebuilding?

To begin, peace has not brought prosperity for many. Though the war is over, over half the nation's children are malnourished. Buildings remain in ruins, roads unpaved, and jobs are hard to come by. Disease is rampant. Clean water is in short supply. Marriages are broken.

Others point to the explosive growth of evangelical Christian churches, whose fire-and-brimstone, apocalyptic vision of creation meshes very nicely with the rise in accusations of witchcraft.

Still others point to the influx of ideas from the neighboring Congo, where economic turmoil and political upheavel have lead to the development of a particularly malignant belief system regarding "child sorcerers" and "child witches."

Most human-rights activists and psychologists, though, agree that the root of accusations and abuse lies in Angola'¹s own wounded heart. Twenty-seven years of horrific warfare has left the entire country in a state of severe post-traumatic stress.

"Witchcraft fears have broken out in many societies during times of distress," explains Francisco de Mata Mourisca, the Roman Catholic bishop of Uige. The Bishop¹s hilltop compound has become a refuge for the nervous, hungry and sometimes bruised children who have fled the witch hunts.

"But you have to ask yourself, why our children?" de Mata Mourisca said. "The answer in Angola is simple. Because war has brutalized our families in the same way it destroyed our homes and streets."

Consider what has happened in the Bishop¹s own city of Uige, a coffee-growing town near the Congo border: children's advocates say that a teenager accused of witchery was set ablaze by a mob that included his own family. Another child was buried alive, beneath the corpse of a man he allegedly cursed. Children as young as five have been hanged, stoned to death, raped, burned and drowned in rivers after being accused of practicing witchcraft.  

Consider Carolina Jorge, a forty-five year-old grandmother. She looks eighty-five. "Nobody can care for all these scattered children anymore. They just get spoiled by witchcraft.  She is describing her own grandchildren, Jose (10) and Carolina (7). When their parents recently died of an undiagnosed illness (probably AIDS), the children moved in with Jorge. The little children were blamed for bewitching their own parents to death. In February, local police found Jose and little Carolina bound, beaten and imprisoned in an animal pen behind Jorge¹s mud hut.

Rarely does the government take action in such flagrant cases of abuse. Jorge was the exception: she was jailed for five days. Unrepentent, Jorge explains, "Those children weren't normal. They had a suitcase that made a singing noise. And the boy messed his bed every night. He was possessed."

Her grandchildren and their suitcase now live in an orphanage in the capital of Luanda.

THOSE WHO PROFIT

Finally, there are men like Papa Matumona (51). Clad in spotless white pants and a t-shirt covered with mutiple images of Marilyn Monroe's face, Matumona is the most powerful and influential kimbandero (faith healer) in Uige. He runs an evangelical treatment center for the "child witches" out of an old pastry factory. Others say it's not a treatment center at all -- it¹s a torture chamber.

"He forces them to jump and dance for hours during the hottest part of the day" to purge them of their magical powers, says Leopoldina Neto, a UNICEF child-protection officer in Uige. "He beats them. He puts chili powder in their eyes and drips boiling palm oil in their ears."

Papa Matumona denies the accusations. "I cure with love," he affirms, clutching his Bible. The services at his Provincial Center for Traditional Psychiatry are free - though he later admits that he puts his young patients to work in his vegetable gardens to pay off their "treatment" fees. Other kimbanderos demand a goat or metal pot as payment. Only then will they identify for anxious parents which of their children is a "witch." Next to oil, this capitalization on suffering makes "witchcraft" one of the few profitable industries in postwar Angola.

United Nations workers hope to break this supply-and-demand cycle through the simplest, and most difficult, of means: education. Specifically education of parents and other adults. It will be an intense, uphill struggle. An international study of the crisis has been abandoned. The Angolan researcher who headed the project -- like so many local police -- concluded that "witchcraft" was in fact real. By extension, then, most if not all of the accusations must be true.

DEFENDING THEMSELVES

Aside from over-worked, under-staffed aids workers and some religious organizations, the only people to speak in defense of the "child witches" are the accused themselves.

"It's all lies," says Sebastiao Nzuzi (12) a bald little boy with a big smile. He was stoned in his village for being a wizard. "I don't need to be cured. I'm as normal as anybody."

The local Catholic orphanage where Sebastiao sought refuge has taught him a few things -- like how to speak up for and be proud of himself. He is among twenty "child witches" who live in a sturdy building beneath a few eucalyptus trees.

Fortunately for them, the building is sturdy. One afternoon, people from the nearby slums surrounded the orphanage and pelted it with rocks. The boys, they claimed, flew over their houses at night and tried to bewitch their children. Sebastiao and the other "child witches" hunkered inside, shaking.  

--
It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars. -- Garrison Keillor
 

                                                                  ****************************

AREN came to life on 1 January 2000, not as a new years baby but as the reorganized rebirth of an exsisting Pagan Civil/Religious Rights Group. Our predecessor WADL, Witches Anti-Discrimination League was founded in New York City on Samhain, October 31 1970 by Dr. Leo Luis Martello, a pioneer in the Pagan Rights movement. WADL evolved from a letter writing group to full blooded Pagan Activist Group, actively participating in Pagan Right demonstrations in all parts of the Nation. WADL pursued discrimination cases involving allowing Pagans to wear emblems of their faith in the business
workplace, assisted in the presentation of a court case in Lincoln Park, MI to allow a Honor Roll student to wear, openly, the emblem of her faith, assisted in cases in Indiana where discrimination existed in schools, their Attorneys defended Religious Discrimination in a PA custody case, in
addition WADL had the first Witch Attorney ever admitted to practice in from of The United States Supreme Court.

Currently AREN is active in the Pagan Prison Ministry and is assisting in defense of the Civil/Religious Rights of a member in Great Falls, SC.

Press Release from AREN, Alternative Religions Educational Network
An International Pagan Rights Organization
PO Box 1346, Lexington, KY 40588-1346
Fax: (530) 869-5928
news@aren.org

http://www.aren.org
 

Nairobi Conference Focuses on Ending Mutilation of Women
News and commentary by Khrysso Heart LeFey
PIR Contributing Editor

An international conference was slated to meet in Nairobi, Kenya in mid-September to consider social, legal, and political aspects in eradicating the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

FGM, also known as female circumcision, is often justified on religious grounds, and though often associated with Islam in Africa, is actually a pre-Christian social custom. Traditional religion ("Animism") is still a predominant practice throughout Africa, constituting the primary religious orientation of probably 40 to 50% of African people.

The main thrust of the three-day conference was to discuss ratification of The Maputo Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, adopted by the 53 Heads of State of the African Union at a conference in the capital of Mozambique last year. The Protocol stipulates that FGM should be prohibited and condemned.

The Maputo Protocol requires ratification by 15 members of the African Union before it will acquire any teeth. Representatives of No Peace Without Justice, a major organizer of the conference, say that  Ratification of the Protocol by as many countries as possible would be a considerable step forward not only for the fight against FGM, but also for women's rights and gender issues in general."

African Traditional Religions (ATRs), like Neo-Pagan paths, generally honor the Divine Feminine. Though scholars agree that it appears to have originated as a pre-Christian practice, FGM rarely occurs among contemporary practitioners of ATRs; rather, it functions as a powerful tool for patriarchal control, mostly but not exclusively among Muslims. Some Muslim scholars insist that Muhammad condoned, though did not insist on, the practice, if not too much cutting was done.

It is important to reiterate that FGM is not a religious practice but a social one--it is not an imperative in Islam the way male genital mutilation is in Judaism. Rather, it is thought that cutting away the most sensitive parts of girls' genitalia, thus robbing them of most of their ability ever to enjoy sex, will help to enforce their fidelity to their husbands. In cultures where FGM is practiced, chastity is still a selling point where women are still treated as property, and adultery by women is a capital offense.

Modern technology has led to FGM's sometimes being performed as a surgical procedure, though in cultures in which women are considered dispensable, sanitation and anesthesia have traditionally tended to be low priorities. Death and infertility are not uncommon results of the procedure even in the 21st century.

FGM is becoming a better-recognized human-rights issue on the world scene, though it began to be addressed as a political issue sometime during the 1950s--still quite late in the timeline for a practice that is centuries, and probably millennia, old.

It occasionally makes its way into industrialized nations from cultures where it is tolerated, said conference organizers, who promoted attendance by political leaders:  Representatives of the international community will be involved to highlight the international dimension of the problem, given... the tendency to perpetuate the practice by some immigrant communities. For example, the conference was to be opened by the President of the Republic of Kenya.

Overall, the conference hoped to involve victims, former circumcisers (both lay and professional), doctors, teachers, judges, both provincial and national government representatives, parliamentarians and representatives of civil society, NGOs, cultural and religious community leaders, and the media from across Kenya.

Conference organizers and sponsors were many and diverse. They included the Kenyan Government, No Peace Without Justice, the Association of Media Women in Kenya, the Italian Association for Women in Development, the European Commission, The Canadian International Development Agency, UNICEF, the Italian Cooperation, the Norwegian Government, UNIFEM, the Swedish Government, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, and GTZ (a German development organization).
 

"God Wills It"
By Uri Avnery

Sunday 12 September 2004

"Two shocking manifestos were published [in Israel] this week.

Both call for comment."

"The second manifesto declares that the Halakha (Jewish religious law) commands the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians if this helps to save Jews. It is signed by the heads of the "Arrangement Yeshivot," the West Bank settlement rabbis and other religious leaders. They were later joined by one of the two Chief Rabbis (the Sephardic one)."

"The second manifesto is far more dangerous. A religious doctrine that calls for the killing of civilians in the name of God is very serious. Such a decree signed by the rabbis of the "Arrangement Yeshivot" is tenfold worse."

"It is impossible to know how many, if any, of these [Palestinian] civilians --  men, women, old people and children are killed by Arrangement Yeshivot soldiers, or soldiers commanded by kippa-wearing officers. Nobody can be accused without incriminating evidence. But it is clear that the interpretation of the Halakha by the rabbis has now put a kosher-stamp on such acts.

It puts an end to any pretence of the "pure arms" myth ["Pure Arms for a Pure Cause" - The ends justify the means]. It negates not only the prohibition of murder, but also the shame for such acts."

"Many of the most heinous crimes in human history were committed in the name of religion. The Book of Joshua says that God commanded the Children of Israel to commit a general ethnic cleansing in the [Pagan] land of Canaan. The crusaders carried out horrible massacres in this country (and against the Jews on the way here) while shouting "Deus le volt!" (God wills it). Three years ago, Osama Bin-Laden sent his people to kill thousands in the New York TwinTowers in the name of Allah.

May God protect us from those who would speak in His name."

Source:
Uri Avnery is a journalist, peace activist, former member of the [Israeli] Knesset, and leader of Gush Shalom. He is a regular contributor to Media Monitors Network (MMN).
courtesy © 2004 Uri Avnery

Find this article in full at:
http://world.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/9608

May 26, 2004 - Religion News Service European Union Debate on Religion in Constitution Continues Seven EU nations have urged that the bloc's new constitution make explicit reference to Europe's Christian roots, but France objects.
 

SAFF Is Back On Line
As you know our fight for freedom of belief for New Age philosophies is essential but we
are constantly being harrassed by Xists who try to censor our work in disseminating the truth.   We
have yet again had to switch out website host and would very much appreciate your help again in updating the links on your site.

British and Commonwealth Pagan News
http://www.saff.ukhq.co.uk/

Note: In Jan. 2007, a cable series, NAKED SCIENCE, showed "Who Built Stonehenge," an excellent program illustrating this and other research.

Soul-eater' Forced into Witches' Refuge
March 09, 2004

SPARE a thought for Tabouanga, whom neighbors think is a witch. She has officially been a hex since New Year's Eve, when the local witch-hunting posse came to call. ... Tabouanga denied the charge. But the posse has ways of finding out the truth -- a hallucinogenic potion that could get the devil himself to confess.

But then her daugher, Lizeta, found her and brought her to a place in the capital called "The Court of Witches." Here, among 75 other alleged sorceresses, she has found a roof and one meal a day -- and time to reflect on the injustice of life.

READ THE FULL STORY: accessed March 18, 2004 at  THE AUSTRALIAN
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,8912784%5E29677,00.html

accessed March 18, 2004 at
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=2146410582

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