Magic Statistics

The United States recently added the central Asian republic of Uzbekistan to its annual list of the worst violators of religious freedom.  The English language edition of China's People's Daily has responded with an article that could have been written by Uzbekistan's public relations office.  We have no religious conflict in our illustrious republic so stop meddling in our internal affairs—and, oh yes, the United States is a big hypocrite.

This step once again demonstrates the one-sided approach and "double standards" of the American foreign policy institution with regard to such pressing issues as freedom of religions and conscience.

Religious toleration and forbearance have always been and remain to be the most important component of the state policy of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

“Most important component of state policy”?  That must be why unregistered churches are illegal, and anyone found pastoring an unregistered religious group is immediately imprisoned.  Organising an unregistered religious meeting gets you five years in the slammer, and evangelising gets you three. Only certain religious bodies are allowed to have churches or mosques even considered for registration—Sunni Islam, Russian Orthodox, Judaism, and some Protestant bodies, and permission for places of worship is by no means always granted.  House-church meetings are without exception outlawed.

In the last years not a single fact of an interfaith standoff or conflict situations, neither among the confessions themselves nor confessions and the state structures was observed in the country.

That’s because religious activities outside registered places of worship are ruthlessly suppressed.  Uzbek authorities proscribe operation of any religiously affiliated charities or other non-government humanitarian relief work, even though that is not against the law as it now stands.  Educational institutions run by religious groups are forbidden. In the northwestern region of the country, Protestants have been altogether prohibited from worshipping, and Christian children intimidated to renounce their religion.

A bill presented in the Uzbek parliament would outlaw talking about one’s religion outside state-sanctioned places of worship.

The state Religious Affairs Committee told the religious leaders that they and their clergy must stop their members and those who regularly attend places of worship from sharing their beliefs with anyone outside places of worship sanctioned by the state.

Anyone sharing their beliefs outside of the places would be fined between 200 and 600 times the minimum monthly salary (which averages US$ 10). Second time offenders—and the leader of their religious community who would be considered objectively responsible for their relapse—would be jailed for between three and eight years.

The US says it added Uzbekistan to the list because of savage attacks on Muslims worshipping outside state-sanctioned mosques.  Authorities justify arresting and jailing thousands of peaceful Muslims as a means of preventing the growth of radical Islamism.  Repression has grown so intolerable that the government has been accused of conducting a war against Islam.

Yet Uzbekistan maintains it’s paradise on earth for religious believers.

We have all grounds to firmly state that all conditions for the free religious observance by followers of traditional religions are created and guaranteed by the Constitution in our country.

Uzbekistan was named one of four focus countries for this year’s International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church.

More reports on persecution in Uzbekistan can be found here and here.

Previous related post: International Day of Prayer, 2006

Pius Ncube, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, has engaged in a long and tiring struggle to help Zimbabwe's poor and suffering in the face of intimidation at home and flagging interest abroad. President Robert Mugabe’s most determined and outspoken critic, he continues to campaign for human rights despite official condemnation and death threats.

It has been seven years since Mugabe triggered the decline of his country by ordering "war veterans" to invade white-owned farms after he lost a constitutional referendum. As Mugabe seized control of the judiciary and the press, rigged elections, demolished shanty towns - making 700,000 people destitute - and starved his political opponents, Archbishop Ncube came to prominence as the archetypal turbulent priest, Mugabe's most implacably defiant domestic opponent, vowing to continue to speak the truth even though his name was rumoured to be on a secret "death list".

There are worse things than martyrdom to a man of the stature of Archbishop Ncube, however. Among them is the realisation that people are losing interest in his cause. Earlier this week in London he admitted to a private meeting of MPs and peers that the plight of Zimbabwe was now largely a "forgotten issue".

Abp Ncube told a London audience that Zimbabwe has the world’s highest AIDS rate, the world’s lowest life expectancy, and that the country’s overall death rate is higher than in Darfur or Iraq.  The economy suffers from the fastest rate of decline and the highest inflation on the planet.  Starvation, corruption, and violence are endemic.

Yet Mugabe keeps on keepin' on, reigning as if none of that was in any way his fault or his responsibility.  He has successfully co-opted many of Zimbabwe’s church leaders, and those he hasn’t he harasses or double-crosses.

Archbishop Ncube was furious when a statement issued by the Churches called The Zimbabwe We Want: Toward a National Vision was sabotaged by the Government before it was printed. “Mugabe’s cronies took it and removed a whole load of pages,” he said. “That was supposed to be our document. They totally changed the terminology. That shows that the man [Mugabe] is not ready to change.”

The statement, he explained, must have been leaked to the Government by one of a number of pastors who were beginning to side with Mugabe and who had become “disloyal to God and to the people”.

Until the day that the 83-year-old dictator goes to meet his Maker, Abp Ncube tries to prepare young people for the future by teaching them the value of government accountability.

Previous related posts:

• Mugabe prays out of both sides of his mouth
• Mugabe’s day of prayer like asking Satan to preach at Easter
• Zimbabwe observes a sombre anniversary

An association of British magistrates advocates tougher laws against cannabis to combat escalating theft by child drug users.

[T]he call for changes to the cannabis legislation came from 400 delegates at the annual conference of the Magistrates’ Association in Coventry. Roger Davy, a West Yorkshire magistrate and a national spokesman on youth courts, said: “Children — and that’s what they are — as young as 12, 13 and 14 are coming before us for offences of theft and robbery, which they admit are to raise money to feed their cannabis habit.”

He said that cannabis use did not automatically plunge children into a life of crime, but many children believed cannabis was now legal and that nothing would happen if they were caught with it.

Cannabis was recently downgraded from a Class B substance to Class C which has encouraged the belief that possession is not a serious offence.  The magistrates, however, see many young offenders who have moved from cannabis to stronger drugs.

At the same time, a new Home Office report estimates that the total cost to British society of addiction to illicit drugs was £15.4 billion in 2003-04.  Crime accounted for 90% of that.

The EU’s main drug monitoring agency reports that European prices of heroin, cocaine, and other illegal drugs have been falling for the past five years.  As a result, the number of addicts is increasing.  The agency also says Britain is among the worst nations for drug abuse.

The report shows that Britain is top of the league for cocaine use among 15 to 34-year-olds, with 10.5 per cent of the population of that age group trying the drug at least once. Britain also came top of the 15-24 age group, with nearly 6 per cent having used the drug in the past year.

In 2003, Britain led the EU in seizures of heroin and Ecstasy and was second in cocaine and cannabis seizures.  Despite that, officials admit they are failing significantly to reduce users’ access to drugs.

Previous related posts:

• Cocaine-using celebs help destabilise Colombia
• Think marijuana’s not addictive? Think again.

Last month Nadine Dorries, Conservative MP for Mid Bedfordshire, introduced a private member’s bill to reduce the time limit on abortions in the UK from 24 to 21 weeks and establish a 10-day waiting period before an abortion could proceed.  Despite the fact that the bill was handily defeated in the House of Commons, she and her staff received a barrage of death threats.

Tory MP Nadine Dorries needed police protection after threats from crazed abortion rights ‘extremists’ Fanatics bombarded her with anonymous phone calls after she introduced a tenminute Parliamentary Bill to make abortions harder to obtain.

Her worried staff were warned that they would burn in hell if they continued to back her campaign.

Eventually Mrs Dorries called in the police and House of Commons security She said: “I was told by a colleague that I would unleash the gates of hell if I tried to bring down the legal age of abortion from 24 to 21 weeks and it looks like he was right.

“My staff have been told they will burn in hell, my home has been besieged by anonymous telephone calls, extremist groups have sent out inflammatory messages to their members, “It got so bad that we had to alert House of Commons security and my constituency police.

In response to the threats, Mrs Dorries, a former nurse, vows to continue efforts to persuade her colleagues and the British people that her proposal is an idea whose time has come.  Her argument is based on recent scientific advances indicating that unborn babies become sentient by 21 weeks of gestation.

After British media reported the threats, Mrs Dorries was flooded once again—this time, with offers from bodyguards.

Tory MP Nadine Dorries has been inundated with CVs from bodyguards following a spate of threats.
. . .
Mrs Dorries said: “After the article appeared in the BoS [Bedfordshire on Sunday] I did receive a number of CVs and pictures from people offering to protect me and to be with me every minute.

“It was all a bit of a joke in the office, but I won’t be requiring anyone’s services.”

The clamour over Mrs Dorries’s bill seems odd in view of the fact that, only a few months ago, Tony Blair said he was willing to consider reducing the legal time limit for abortions.  The prime minister was not mentioned in press reports of the Commons debate, however; the only Labour MP who spoke was Chris McCafferty, who denounced the bill as "an attack on women's reproductive rights".  She apparently did not confront the contention that 21-week-old foetuses are sentient.

h/t: Verum Serum

Previous related post: Tony Blair wants to re-open abortion debate

The collect for today, the Sunday next before Advent, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For the Epistle: Jeremiah 23:5-8
The Gospel: St John 6:5-14