Magic Statistics

The British government has ordered the deportation to Iran of a young woman who converted from Islam to Christianity before fleeing her home country.  Home Office officials turned down her application for asylum despite being alerted to a death warrant issued in her name by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Council saying she deserves to be stoned to death for apostasy.  Samar Razavi was supposed to be deported yesterday but received a last-minute reprieve after MP Ann Widdicombe raised her case in Parliament.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has agreed to take another look at her situation.

GORDON Brown has agreed to urgently review the case of the Iranian woman from Bournemouth who says she will face the death penalty if she is deported home.

The plight of 29-year-old Samar Razavi was raised by Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe during Prime Minister's Questions yesterday on another day of dramatic developments.

Miss Widdecombe had been moved to bring the case to the House of Commons following a phone call from [Dorset] Daily Echo religious affairs correspondent Ruth Oliver.

The Prime Minister's agreement to look at the case "immediately" has delayed Samar's deportation for a second time.

Mr Brown told Miss Widdecombe in the Commons: "I will look at the case you have brought to me and we will look at it in detail immediately.

"It is our policy not to deport to countries where torture has been practised."

Since her arrival three years ago, Samar has been worshipping at the Father’s House Church, Bournemouth, where regular prayer vigils have been held on her behalf.  The campaign to keep her in Britain has now been joined by the Rt Rev Michael Scott-Joynt, Bishop of Winchester, who said,

“It is deeply inhuman and wrong to send her back. I am in no doubt that she is in real danger if the Home Office send her back. I hope they see sense and don’t deport her.”

According to the Evangelical Alliance, which represents many thousands of British Christians, Samar’s predicament exemplifies the Home Office’s lack of knowledge about religious issues affecting immigration applicants.  Officials’ ignorance is endangering the lives of many foreign Christians seeking asylum.

In a new report on Asylum Justice, the Evangelical Alliance quotes an asylum claimant who says that she was asked to prove her Christianity by describing how to cook a turkey for Christmas.  Christian asylum seekers have also been asked to identify the forbidden fruit eaten by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and to name the two thieves crucified on either side of Jesus.  The answers to those questions cannot be found in the Bible.

Obviously, the Home Office has a huge problem in this area.

Prayer is needed for Samar and Gordon Brown as he considers her circumstances.

Previous related posts:

• Man stoned to death for adultery in Iran
• An easy quiz
• Iranian converts to Christianity tortured, murdered
• Iran’s Christmas hypocrisy
• What has the Home Office done wrong now?

Poor Zimbabweans displaced and dispossessed in the government’s infamous Operation Murambatsvina (Operation Drive Out the Filth) were promised new houses.  After international censure, the government launched Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle (Operation Have a Good Life), under which homes and small businesses would be re-built.

Three years later, however, almost no construction has taken place.  Building materials designated for the task have been diverted to other projects.  Guess whose projects.

The UN news agency Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) reports from Hopley Farm, a camp for internally displaced persons 25 km south-east of Harare.

Local government officials responsible for the construction of housing for 1,000 families as part of Operation Garikai told IRIN the programme had been stopped after cement and money for workers' salaries had run out.

The officials showed IRIN a letter written to Ignatius Chombo, the minister of local government, which read, "Please take note of the 11,150 bags [of cement], said to have gone to President Robert Mugabe's residence in Borrowdale."

They informed him that Operation Garikai construction activities had ceased because "the cement was said to have been returned, when in actual fact it was not. The cement was used in Borrowdale towards the construction of the president's house."

Some materials were also used in various public works projects, including construction of a dam, repairs to a prison, and hospital renovations.

A few houses have been built in Bulawayo but, because they have no toilets or running water, municipal authorities deemed the buildings uninhabitable and evicted residents.

Previous related posts:

• Housing shortage in Zimbabwe? Believe it!
• Housing shortage in Zimbabwe? Don’t believe it!
• Zimbabwe rounds up destitute street people

Wealthy patients from Canada and other countries travel to China to receive transplants of organs taken from executed prison inmates.  McGill University bioethics professor Leigh Turner rejects China’s claim that prisoners voluntarily donate their organs.

Chinese transplant physicians are estimated to have performed more than 60,000 organ transplants. These transplants were performed in a country with no legislation establishing brain-death criteria for determination of death, no organized national system of organ donation by informed, consenting donors, and widespread cultural and religious norms that make the concept of organ donation alien to many individuals.

The canard that prisoners in China provide informed, voluntary consent to organ donation must be dismissed. Imprisoned individuals can easily be intimidated with violence or hints of repercussions for family members, or reassured with false promises. Physicians, police officers, prison officials and prisoners who have left China dismiss the claim that informed consent is sought from prisoners. Huang Peng, a former prison official at Shenyang No. 2 Prison in the province of Liaoning, says: "There is no family willing to have their loved ones' organs taken. And there is no such thing as a prisoner who volunteers."

At least a dozen agencies that market transplant operations in China promise international customers that organs will become available within days or weeks of ordering.  This creates a huge incentive for premature, if not illegal, execution of prisoners.  It has also given rise to the unpleasant phenomenon of “transplant tourism”.

Prof Turner has a good question: Given that the World Medical Association condemns China’s policy of harvesting organs from executed prisoners, why is the Chinese Medical Association permitted to remain a member of the WMA?

Previous related posts:

• China’s organ transplant business
• Albertans buying body parts in China: David Kilgour

UPDATE (19 Jul.): A commenter speaking on behalf of the WMA says that discussions between the WMA and the Chinese Medical Association on this issue are ongoing.

I burst out laughing when I read this comment by British Columbia NDP MLA Guy Gentner:

"I would have thought working in the civil service was a reward in itself."

Is it the policy of the BC NDP that government employees shouldn’t expect to be paid?

MLA Gentner made the comment in the context of criticising a government staff appreciation programme that rewards especially good workers with small gifts.  The programme cost BC taxpayers a grand total of $51,452 during the last fiscal year.  That’s about one one-millionth of the total outlays of the provincial government.

The Minister of Finance informed the MLA that the programme was initiated during the last NDP regime, but that didn’t faze our intrepid government-extravangance watchdog.  He was particularly incensed that employee rewards sometimes take the form of Starbucks gift certificates.  He pointed out that his constituency office has a coffee machine that his workers are free to use.

"I'll go and get Nabob grounds and brew coffee for staff, free of cost."

He thinks Nabob is good enough for his employees?  That explains everything.

Previous related posts: 

• St Bribe, patron saint of civil servants
• NDP official suspended for calling opponent “potato head”
• BC economy recovering from NDP 1990s slump