AP reports:
— “Hamas spiritual leader Younis al-Astal lashed out after hearing that the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the main U.N. body aiding Palestinian refugees, planned to introduce lessons about the Holocaust to Gaza students.”
— “Adding the Holocaust to the curriculum would amount to ‘marketing a lie and spreading it,’ al-Astal wrote in a statement.:”
— “‘I do not exaggerate when I say this issue is a war crime, because of how it serves the Zionist colonizers and deals with their hypocrisy and lies,’ he wrote.”
— “Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri also objected to including what he referred to as the ‘so-called Holocaust’ in the lesson plan. ‘We think it’s more important to teach Palestinians the crimes of the Israeli occupation,’ he said.”
Day: August 31, 2009
Afghanistan: Taliban disfigure Muslims who dare to vote
AP reports:
— “In an example of the extreme threats that voters faced, an Afghan man said Monday that Taliban militants cut off his nose and both ears as he tried to vote.”
— “‘I was on my way to a polling station when Taliban stopped me and searched me. They found my voter registration card,’ Lal Mohammad said from a hospital bed in Kabul. He said they cut off his nose and ears before beating him unconscious with a weapon.”
— “‘I regret that I went to vote,’ Mohammad said, crying and trying to hide his disfigured face. ‘What is the benefit of voting to me?'”
Communist China: “Organ trafficking flourishes. The government tries to regulate it.”
Communist China: “Organ trafficking flourishes. The government tries to regulate it.”
— Asia News reports:
— “The issue of organ transplants in China has two major problems. First of all organs transplanted are mostly taken from people condemned to death, often without their consent or without that of family members. Secondly, very often the transplants are carried out to supply foreigners who can pay handsomely for the organ and the operation, but penalizing the local people in need of a transplant. Until two years ago, the cost for a kidney transplant was 62 thousand dollars, for the heart it was 140 thousand U.S. dollars.”
“Bangladesh: Muslims threaten Catholic women of Dewtola village”
“Bangladesh: Muslims threaten Catholic women of Dewtola village”
— Asia News reports: “Catholic women of the village of Dewtola can no longer go to mass because of continual threats from local Muslims. For the past several weeks tensions have been mounting around the parish of St. Francis Xavier in Golla, Nawabgonj district.”
Communist Chinese Regime Blacklists 247 Dissidents
Communist Chinese Regime Blacklists 247 Dissidents
— NDTV reports:
— “Zan Aizong is a well-known Chinese blogger who’s sometimes critical of the Communist Party. In 2006, he was arrested and fired from his job as the Zhejiang bureau chief of the Chinese Ocean News for writing an article that exposed the forced demolition of a Christian church building.”
— “Well now the regime has labeled him a dissident—adding him to a secret media blacklist and shutting down his blog.”
— “The blacklist was created by China’s Propaganda Ministry. It contains the names of 247 so-called dissidents that Chinese media are now forbidden to interview or write about.”
— “Chinese news service Boxun.net reports that the media have been ordered to copy the blacklist by hand—making sure there’s no electronic record.”