What causes dry lips, and how can you treat them? Does lip balm actually help?

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Christian Moro, Bond University and Charlotte Phelps, Bond UniversityAs we head into the colder weather, many of us might be afflicted with the irritating ailment of dry and chapped lips.

People have been trying to figure out how to fix dry lips for centuries. Using beeswax, olive oil and other natural ingredients have been reported as early as Cleopatra’s time, around 40 B.C.

In 1833, there were even reports of human earwax being recommended as a successful remedy for dry, cracked lips. Not long after, the first commercial lip balms hit the market.

So what causes dry lips, and which lip balms actually help? The key is to avoid lip balms that contain certain additives which might worsen the problem.

They need to be soft but resilient

Our lips are constantly exposed to the elements, such as sunlight, wind, dry air, and cold weather. They have to withstand our daily lifestyle, including contact with food, cosmetics, biting, picking, rubbing against clothes, kissing and more.

So, although they look soft and fleshy, our lips need to be resilient and tough.

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Curious Kids: why do our toes and fingers get wrinkly in the bath?

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Lips sit at the junction where our outside facial skin transitions into the tissue layers lining the mouth. As such, the lips are structured similar to mucous membranes, but with the addition of a protective outside layer of skin. Lips don’t have hair follicles, or sweat, saliva and oil glands.

This unique structure means they’re particularly prone to dryness as they have a much lower ability to hold water than the rest of the face’s skin.

What causes dry lips?

Many of us get dry lips at certain times of the year. This can occur naturally, or be brought on by many different factors, including:

• inflamed lips, known as cheilitis. This can be due to a skin condition, or an infection such as herpes or cold sores
• allergies
• medications which impact the salivary glands, the mouth’s surrounding muscles, or sensations throughout the lip area
• tongue injuries, teeth that rub against the lips, or other dental issues
• poor oral health. This can be brought on by general neglect, eating disorders, or bad oral hygiene habits
• burns, such as eating food that’s too hot, or sunburn. Burns can result in the lips swelling, scarring and blistering, and it may take a long time for the pain to alleviate
• some diseases or disorders, such as Sjögren’s syndrome
• dehydration, heat stroke, fever, or excessive heat
• nasal congestion, which leads to chronic mouth-breathing. This can sometimes be a result of illness, such as when you have a common cold
• cold weather or cold wind that runs along the lips and removes moisture
• persistent licking, which can create a wet-dry cycle that excessively dries out your lips.

The dryness can also lead to pain, itching or stinging.

If dry lips start causing serious issues, it may be helpful to discuss this with a medical professional.

How can you treat dry lips?

It is important to identify what’s causing dry lips. If it’s due to lip licking, then you need to make habitual changes to stop the practice. If it’s due to cold, windy or dry weather, then certain balms and ointments can help protect the lips.

Drinking adequate amounts of water can assist, because this helps prevent dry skin in general.

If this isn’t enough, bland, non-irritating, unflavoured lip balms can help, as they act as a film covering the lip surface, keeping moisture in.

It’s best to choose a bland lip balm that doesn’t contain fragrances, flavours and colours.
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In many cases these use petroleum jelly as a base (although it’s not required), along with refined mineral oils to remove any hazardous compounds, and other ingredients that can assist in retaining and maintaining a barrier function.

In the race to appeal to consumers, cosmetic manufacturers have trialled a number of new ingredients in their lip balms. Popular lip balms often contain additives which can make the balm smell or taste nice, or soften the feel when it rubs against the lips.

Some of these extra ingredients can help. For example, if you’re out in the sun a lot, lip balm with included sunscreen is a great addition.

Products to avoid

In many cases, these compounds provide the feeling of immediate relief on the lips but don’t actually help with the barrier function. And in some cases, they can become irritants and even worsen the dryness.

When choosing a lip balm, try to avoid products containing these ingredients:

• fragrances
• flavours, such as mint, citrus, vanilla, and cinnamon
• shiny glosses, which can intensify damage from the sun’s rays
• colours, which can cause irritation and do nothing to assist the barrier function
• menthol, phenol or salicylic acid, which can actually make your lips drier
• additional, unnecessary ingredients such as camphor, lanolin, octinoxate, oxybenzone or propyl gallate.

And be sure to stop biting, picking or excessively licking your lips.

Staying hydrated and applying a bland lip balm should be a routine incorporated into your every day lifestyle for healthy, protected, and moisturised lips.

Christian Moro, Associate Professor of Science & Medicine, Bond University and Charlotte Phelps, PhD Student, Bond University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Could the AstraZeneca vaccine cause Guillain-Barré syndrome? We don’t know yet — but there’s minimal cause for concern

Nathan Bartlett, University of NewcastleThe Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) yesterday revealed there have been six reports of Guillain-Barré syndrome in Australia following the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine.

This is an autoimmune disorder, which causes muscle weakness, numbness and tingling. It can be life threatening if it involves the respiratory muscles.

But at this stage, there isn’t cause for serious concern. The six reports are out of 1.8 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine administered in Australia so far. This means the syndrome has affected about one in 300,000, which is less than the rate at which it occurs in the population normally; in adults, we see about 2–3 cases per 100,000 people every year.

Neither the TGA nor any other country have confirmed there’s a link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and Guillain-Barré syndrome. So these cases may have occurred by chance. At the same time, it is possible there’s a connection.

What is Guillain-Barré syndrome?

Guillain-Barré syndrome occurs when the immune system attacks healthy nerve cells. In about two-thirds of cases, it follows a viral or bacterial infection.

The most common infection linked to the syndrome is the bacteria Campylobacter jejuni, which infects the gastrointestinal tract and commonly causes diarrhoea.

We’ve also seen it occur after infection with viruses such as Zika virus and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). It has been linked to COVID-19 too, but we don’t have much data on this yet.

In people with Guillain-Barré syndrome, the immune system attacks healthy nerve cells.
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The reason for the link between Guillain-Barré syndrome and infections is complex, but essentially scientists believe it’s caused by something called “molecular mimicry”.

This occurs when the structures on the surface of pathogens resemble (or mimic) structures on your cells. For Guillain-Barré syndrome, this relates to sugar structures (glycans) on the myelin sheath (the insulating covering on neurons that enables them to transmit nerve impulses).

For people with Guillain-Barré syndrome, these sugar structures on their nerve cells appear similar to sugar-containing molecules on the surface of some bacteria or viruses. As a result, antibodies generated to target the infection also attack nerve cells (autoantibodies), destroying the myelin sheath nerves need to conduct signals. This stops muscles from working properly.

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Read more:
Explainer: what is Guillain-Barré syndrome and is it caused by the Zika virus?

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The syndrome can affect different muscles, meaning the weakness can be felt in different places. For example, it might affect speech, breathing or bladder control.

It can be treated with antibodies from healthy donors (immunoglobulin therapy) which inhibits the autoantibodies causing damage. Another option is to filter the autoantibodies out of the blood (plasma exchange). In time, most people will recover with treatment; the condition is very rarely fatal.

The syndrome is more common in people 50 and older, which is a concern as this is the age group receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine in Australia. But it’s still vanishingly rare, and this risk — if indeed there is a link — doesn’t come close to outweighing the benefit of the vaccine for this age group.

So, how could Guillain-Barré syndrome be linked with the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Along with the TGA, the European Medicines Agency is reportedly assessing reports of Guillain-Barré syndrome in a small number of people who have received the AstraZeneca vaccine.

There is a possible explanation — though it’s important to stress that in the absence of empirical evidence, this is currently only speculation. The adenovirus — that’s the viral vector used in the AstraZeneca vaccine — like many viruses, contains proteins linked to sugar structures (glycoproteins).

So one potential mechanism is that some of the antibodies generated against the vector following vaccination recognise these glycoproteins and cross-react with sugar structures on nerve cells. This is similar to the process I described above in terms of how Guillain-Barré syndrome could be linked to infection.

Notably, the blood clots linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine are also thought to be an autoimmune driven illness. This has opened up the possibility autoimmune reactions can be triggered by the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Still, the numbers of either event are very low and currently the data is lacking to definitively show that these adverse events are being caused by autoimmunity induced by the adenovirus vector. We need more research.

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In very rare cases, we’ve seen Guillain-Barré syndrome in the days and weeks after flu vaccination.

As the flu vaccine is different from year to year, this only happens sometimes. But when scientists have observed an increased risk, it’s been only 1–2 additional cases per million flu vaccines. You’d be at greater risk of contracting Guillain-Barré syndrome after getting the flu than after getting the flu shot.

The same is very likely to be true of COVID.

What now?

The TGA has called Guillain-Barré syndrome an “adverse event of special interest”. This means it’s still not clear if there’s a causal relationship. From here, the TGA will continue to monitor the situation and collate the data as it comes in, until it can get a clearer picture.

But there’s no need to panic, or to feel discouraged from receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine; this remains an important part of Australia’s vaccination strategy.

For those over 50, you’re still at much greater risk of any adverse outcomes — Guillain-Barré syndrome, blood clots or otherwise — if you contract COVID-19, than from the vaccine.

The risk of COVID remains significant and for those eligible, the AstraZeneca vaccine remains a sensible option to protect yourself and the wider community.

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Read more:
Rare neurological disorder, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, linked to COVID-19

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Nathan Bartlett, Associate Professor, School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy, University of Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Is Sky News shifting Australian politics to the right? Not yet, but there is cause for alarm

Wes Mountain/The Conversation, CC BY-ND

Denis Muller, The University of Melbourne

In his submission to the current Senate inquiry into media diversity in Australia, former prime minister Kevin Rudd warns that Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News Australia is following the template laid down by Murdoch’s Fox News in the United States to radicalise Australian politics. In a decade’s time, Rudd argues, we will see its full impact.

Given the destructive effect of Fox News on the functioning of American democracy, Rudd’s is an alarming prediction.

Whether it comes to pass, however, is another matter. Certainly there are several danger signs that it might, but there are also a few factors pointing the other way.

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Can Fox News survive without Trump in the White House?

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There are three big danger signs.

One is the unconstrained peddling of extreme right-wing propaganda, lies, disinformation, crude distortion of fact and baseless assertions that occurs each night on Sky News.

Here is a brief sample: Rowan Dean’s and Alan Jones’s repeated ravings about the “stolen” US election; Peta Credlin’s false claim that Rudd’s petition for a Murdoch royal commission was an exercise in data-harvesting, for which she had to apologise as part of a confidential defamation settlement; Jones’s disinformation about mask-wearing; James Morrow calling the Trump impeachment trial a “sinister plot by Democrats against the American people”.

Former PM Kevin Rudd is calling for a royal commission into the Murdoch media empire.
Glenn Hunt/AAP

The second big danger sign is the way Sky News has been able to extend its reach from a niche pay-TV base to free-to-air television via 30 WIN regional stations across Australia, and then through social media to the world.

After seeing its audience grow in the first half of 2020, Sky’s pay-TV audience ended the year shrinking. But being on free-to-air TV in regional Australia represents an opportunity for growth.

Data on current regional viewing levels are patchy and incomplete. However, prime-time viewing is reported to have grown 36% in 2020, and is claimed to reach 2.9 million unique viewers.

Sky’s non-TV platform is social media. YouTube, owned by Google, is a very important social media outlet for Sky, and that is where the viewer data reported here come from.

Facebook is also an important outlet. When Facebook blacked out Australian news on February 18, there were roughly 260,000 views of Sky’s announcement of its last appearance there.

If Facebook persists in its blackout, it will clearly damage Sky’s online reach.

The patterns of Sky News viewership on YouTube are revealing.

The big picture is that Sky’s Australian stories get tiny audiences, but stories about the United States get vastly bigger ones, suggesting Sky has developed a following in the US.

For instance, an Alan Jones piece, “Trump’s impeachment charge is ‘more Pelosi rubbish’ ” got 130,000 views.

And the right-wing US journalist Megyn Kelly’s piece, “Trump exposed hidden media bias”, got 467,926 views.

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Read more:
Courting the chameleon: how the US election reveals Rupert Murdoch’s political colours

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Contrast these with Paul Murray’s local story, “Daniel Andrews still playing us v them with quarantine”: about 30,000 views, and Peta Credlin’s “Net zero by 2050 is the ‘economic suicide note for workers’”: about 2000 views.

This tells us Sky is not only playing to a US as well as Australian audience, but is tailoring its programming in ways that have worked for Fox News. At the same time, it is siphoning into Australia the kind of content that has been so divisive in the US.

The growth profile of Fox News shows Murdoch plays a long game.

Fox News started in 1996. Pew Research Center data show it straight-lined near the bottom of the cable ratings in the US for five years, took a jump at about the time of the September 11 attacks, another at the time of the Iraq war in 2003 and thereafter cleared away from its main cable news rivals, CNN and MSNBC.

Rupert Murdoch, owner of Sky News and Fox News, plays a long game.
Dan Himbrechts/AAP

Until the end of the Trump presidency, Fox News was never headed – then after Trump lost, it took a dive. In January 2021, it suffered its worst ratings in 20 years, coming third behind CNN and MSNBC.

This symbiotic connection between an incumbent government and the Murdoch organisation brings us to the third big danger: the relationship between News Corporation in Australia and the Morrison government.

Morrison is not Trump. Yes, he swaggered around in a baseball cap during the 2019 election campaign and, yes, he talks in slogans and sound bites. However, the danger comes not from Morrison’s political persona but from the relationship he and his government have built with News Corporation.

On one reading, it has become a commercial relationship between the government as client and News Corporation as provider of publicity services for a fee.

The fee has taken the form of two payments to Foxtel, one of A$30 million in 2017 and one of A$10 million in 2020, ostensibly for TV coverage of under-represented women’s sport.

No tender process, no publicly available information about the terms, no way of knowing how this public money is being spent. Then recent technical glitches in the televising of W League matches prompted the Greens to ask the auditor-general to investigate.

Against these dangers are some mitigating factors.

One is that Australia’s compulsory voting system makes it very difficult for anyone to win an election with a primary vote that is not at least near the 40th percentile. A Trump-like “base” of 32% or so will not cut it here.

A second is that the religious right in Australia does not have the political clout it does in the US. Issues that excite the religious right, such as abortion, have been long settled here by the courts. The strong vote for marriage equality was another example of the broadly secular nature of our politics.

A third is that the Australian temperament is not, on the whole, excitable. While this means Australians are often excoriated as apathetic, it also means they are not easily outraged.

A fourth is that Australia’s conservatism is of a largely materialistic kind. Franking credits matter. It is also a conservatism that does not like extremism. Morrison seems at last to have realised that outside their Facebook echo chambers, the likes of Craig Kelly and George Christensen may be liabilities.

This pragmatic outlook among voters may prove to be a psychological bulwark against the firebrand reactionary politics promoted by Fox and Sky.

Having said that, there are plenty of emotion-charged issues that give Sky the opportunity to drive wedges into the Australian body politic: asylum-seekers, Muslims, Aboriginal recognition, African gangs, Asians, white supremacy, the pandemic and above all climate change. Sky is into them all.

If anything concrete is to be done to head off the threat seen by Rudd, it is going to involve public policy concerning media accountability, of which a fit-and-proper-person test for television licensees would be an essential part.

However, every attempt so far to exert meaningful accountability on the Australian media has come to nothing in the face of threats from the big media companies, including News Corporation.

Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull, as prime ministers, were in a position to do something about this. Instead, Rudd developed a friendship with the then editor-in-chief of The Australian, and Turnbull made changes to the media ownership laws that empowered Murdoch even more.

It is futile to hope that the Morrison government, engaged as it is in a highly questionable relationship with News Corporation, will do anything about it. As for Labor leader Anthony Albanese, when asked about a Murdoch royal commission, he reached for the barge pole.

If this form of politics-as-usual persists, then Rudd’s prediction cannot be discounted.

Then the nation would be relying on those qualities of the Australian character already mentioned. The question will be whether it will be enough.

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Correction: this article originally stated “In February 2021, it suffered its worst ratings in 20 years…”. The month has been corrected to January.

Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

What Causes an Economic Recession?

Is English Killing Other Languages?

The link below is to an article that includes an embedded video in which the popularity of English is looked at as a cause for the death of other languages. Worth a look.

For more visit:
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/is-the-popularity-of-english-killing-other-languages_b81444

Australian Politics: 27 July 2013

The Gonski reforms for education in Australia continue to cause problems for the ALP, with several states and territories refusing to sign up. The links below are to articles covering stories on some of the states that refuse to sign up.

For more visit:
– http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/education/nt-rejects-federal-schools-deal/story-fn59nlz9-1226686542820
– http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/no-deal-barnett-refuses-to-budge-on-schools-20130726-2qpji.html

Revelations of Torture Spur Wife of Chinese Lawyer to Action

Christian human rights advocate Gao Zhisheng reveals further abuse.

DUBLIN, January 19 (CDN) — Geng He, wife of missing Christian lawyer Gao Zhisheng, is demanding answers from the Chinese government following new revelations of torture of her husband.

“This is the first time that I heard about the details,” Geng, now living in the United States, told Radio Free Asia last week. “My husband did not tell me – would not tell me – how he was tortured.”

After consulting with Geng, The Associated Press (AP) on Jan. 10 published an interview with Gao, an outspoken human rights campaigner, during his brief release from captivity last April, in which he revealed details of the torture he had suffered during the previous 14 months.

Speaking with the AP in a Beijing teahouse on April 7, closely watched by police, Gao described many forms of torture, including a period of 48 hours when he was stripped bare, beaten continually with handguns and subjected to other excruciating abuse.

The AP released the interview in advance of an official visit this week (Jan. 18-21) by Chinese President Hu Jintao to the United States, stating its hope that “publicizing his account will place renewed pressure on the government to disclose Gao’s whereabouts.”

Geng planned to travel to Washington this week to further highlight her husband’s case. At a U.S. State Department dinner at the White House tonight for Hu, she planned to wait outside to draw attention to Gao’s disappearance.

Gao had asked that his account not be made public unless he disappeared again or “made it to someplace safe like the U.S. or Europe,” according to the AP.

Initially seized by public security officials on Feb. 4, 2009, shortly after his wife and two children fled China to seek asylum in the United States, Gao was held virtually incommunicado for more than a year before police staged his brief reappearance in Beijing last April 6. (See http://www.compassdirect.org, “Christian Rights Activist Gao Zhisheng Released,” April 9, 2010.)

After speaking with the AP and other journalists, Gao made a supervised visit to his in-laws in northwestern Xinjiang Province. During that visit, he again vanished on April 20 while in the company of Chinese police, according to a report by The New York Times on April 30, 2009. He has not been seen or heard from since, but China watchers such as Bob Fu of the China Aid Association (CAA) believe he is “definitely in the hands of Chinese security forces.” (See http://www.compassdirect.org, “Human Rights
Lawyer Gao Zhisheng Missing Again,” May 7, 2010.)

 

New Account

In his interview with the AP, Gao explained that police had moved him from his birthplace of Yulin to Beijing, then back to Yulin, and from there to Urumqi, where the most excruciating moments of torture occurred.

Allowed out on an evening walk on Sept. 25, Gao was approached by several Uyghur men, members of a minority ethnic group who claimed to be part of a counterterrorism unit. They punched him in the stomach, handcuffed him and took him to the upstairs room of a building. There they tortured him for a full week, culminating in a period of 48 hours when they stripped him bare and “took turns beating him [with pistols] and did things he refused to describe,” the AP reported.

Gao said this was the darkest point in the 14 months since authorities had seized him in February 2009, and far worse than the torture during a previous disappearance in 2007. At that time, he said in a previous report, security officials gave electric shocks to his genitals and held burning cigarettes close to his eyes to cause temporary blindness.

When Gao in 2007 asked Beijing police why they didn’t put him in prison, they replied, “You’re not good enough for that. Whenever we want you to disappear, you’ll disappear,” according to the AP.

 

‘Words from the Heart’

Fu of CAA on Friday (Jan. 14) also called on the Chinese government to give an account of Gao’s whereabouts, besides imploring President Obama to address the fate of Gao and other prominent Chinese rights defenders during his meetings with Hu.

Fu also released a previously unpublished statement written by Gao on Jan. 1, 2009, shortly before his family’s escape from China, entitled “Words from the Heart.”

Carried out of China by Gao’s wife, the document claimed that authorities had invested a huge amount of manpower, physical resources and funds to silence him.

“Not only is it now extremely difficult for me to make my voice heard, but it is also extremely dangerous,” Gao wrote.

His faith, however, had enabled him to endure under pressure, he stated.

“I am optimistic by nature, and I am a Christian,” he wrote. “Even when I was tortured to near death, the pain was only in the physical body. A heart that is filled with God has no room to entertain pain and suffering.

Gao expressed concern for his wife and children, who had suffered greatly from police harassment. He said authorities even banned his daughter from attending school, another factor prompting the family’s flight to the United States.

Gao urged friends both inside and outside China to defend other human rights advocates imprisoned or harassed by the government, adding that “Heroes like Guo Feixiong … who sacrifice and risk their lives to defend religious freedom, are the true hope of China.”

He also urged that a network be established within China to report on “countless” abuses of human rights.

“The publication of this article will cause me to be kidnapped again,” Gao concluded. “Kidnappings are a normal part of my life now. If it comes again, then let it come!”

 

SIDEBAR

A Brief Biography of Gao Zhisheng

Gao was born in a hillside cave in Yulin, northern China, according to a brief biography written by David Kilgour of Media With Conscience (MWC). Since his parents were too poor to send him to school, he gained a basic education by listening outside the windows of the village classroom.

He then worked briefly as a coal miner before joining the People’s Liberation Army, where he met his future wife, Geng He, obtained a secondary education and became a member of the Communist Party.

Following his discharge from the army, Gao became a street vendor and self-studied to become a lawyer, passing the bar exam in 1994. China’s Ministry of Justice in 2001 named him one of the country’s 10 most remarkable lawyers, according to the MWC biography.

But as Gao began to represent farmers in land compensation cases, practitioners of the banned Falun Gong group and house church members, he quickly lost favor with authorities.

In 2005, after Gao wrote open letters to President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao calling for an end to the torture and execution of Falun Gong members, authorities closed down Gao’s law firm, revoked his license to practice law, and placed Gao, his wife and two children under 24-hour police surveillance, according to reports by the China Aid Association (CAA). Police even beat his then 13-year-old daughter, according to the CAA.

In response, Gao in December 2005 publicly resigned from the Communist Party and later declared that he was a Christian.

Weeks later, on Feb. 4, 2006, Gao and several other high profile Chinese activists launched a “Relay Hunger Strike for Human Rights,” in which ordinary Chinese citizens fasted for 24 hours in rotation across 29 provinces in China. The hunger strikes led to a wave of arrests.

Authorities then seized Gao on Aug. 15, 2006, and on Dec. 22, 2006 they gave him a three-year suspended sentence for subversion. Officials then placed Gao on probation for five years and allowed him to remain at home under strict surveillance.

Authorities again seized Gao in September 2007 after he wrote to the U.S. Congress expressing concern about human rights violations prior to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. On his release in November 2007 Gao issued a statement via the CAA claiming that his captors had tortured him by applying electric shocks to his genitals and holding burning cigarettes close to his eyes. He added that he’d been threatened with death if he spoke about the torture.

Gao was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, 2008 and 2010 in recognition of his ongoing commitment to the advance of human rights in China, according to Kilgour’s report.

State agents abducted Gao on Feb. 4, 2009, shortly after his wife and children fled China to obtain asylum in the United States, and they held him virtually incommunicado for over a year. (See http://www.compassdirect.org, “Action Urged for Missing Rights Activist in China,” March 24, 2009.)

Perhaps as a response to international pressure, police staged a brief reappearance for Gao on April 6, 2010, CAA reported. But on April 20, during a closely-supervised visit to his in-laws in Urumqi, Xinjiang province, Gao again vanished and has not been seen or heard from since.

Chinese officials at every level have consistently denied knowledge of his current location.

Report from Compass Direct News

Police in Sudan Aid Muslim’s Effort to Take Over Church Plot

With possibility of secession by Southern Sudan, church leaders in north fear more land grabs.

NAIROBI, Kenya, October 25 (CDN) — Police in Sudan evicted the staff of a Presbyterian church from its events and office site in Khartoum earlier this month, aiding a Muslim businessman’s effort to seize the property.

Christians in Sudan’s capital city told Compass that police entered the compound of the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SPEC) on Oct. 4 at around 2 p.m. and ordered workers to leave, claiming that the land belonged to Muslim businessman Osman al Tayeb. When asked to show evidence of Al Tayeb’s ownership, however, officers failed to produce any documentation, the sources said.

The church had signed a contract with al Tayeb stipulating the terms under which he could attain the property – including providing legal documents such as a construction permit and then obtaining final approval from SPEC – but those terms remained unmet, church officials said.

Church leader Deng Bol said that under terms of the unfulfilled contract, the SPEC would turn the property over to al Tayeb to construct a business center on the site, with the denomination to receive a share of the returns from the commercial enterprise and regain ownership of the plot after 80 years.

“But the investor failed to produce a single document from the concerned authorities” and therefore resorted to police action to secure the property, Bol said.

SPEC leaders had yet to approve the project because of the high risk of permanently losing the property, he said.

“The SPEC feared that they were going to lose the property after 80 years if they accepted the proposed contract,” Bol said.

SPEC leaders have undertaken legal action to recover the property, he said. The disputed plot of 2,232 square meters is located in a busy part of the heart of Khartoum, where it has been used for Christian rallies and related activities.

“The plot is registered in the name of the church and should not be sold or transfered for any other activities, only for church-related programs,” a church elder who requested anonymity said.

The Rev. Philip Akway, general secretary of the SPEC, told Compass that the government might be annoyed that Christian activities have taken place there for many decades.

“Muslim groups are not happy with the church in north Sudan, therefore they try to cause tension in the church,” Akway told Compass.

The policeman leading the officers in the eviction on Oct. 4 verbally threatened to shoot anyone who interfered, Christian sources said.

“We have orders from higher authorities,” the policeman shouted at the growing throng of irate Christians.

A Christian association called Living Water had planned an exhibit at the SPEC compound on Oct. 6, but an organization leader arrived to find the place fenced off and deserted except for four policemen at the gate, sources said.

SPEC leaders said Muslims have taken over many other Christian properties through similar ploys.

“We see this as a direct plot against their churches’ estates in Sudan,” Akway said.

The Rev. John Tau, vice-moderator for SPEC, said the site where Al Tayeb plans to erect three towers was not targeted accidentally.

“The Muslim businessman seems to be targeting strategic places of the church in order to stop the church from reaching Muslims in the North Sudan,” Tau said.

The unnamed elder said church leaders believe the property grab came in anticipation of the proposed north-south division of Sudan. With less than three months until a Jan. 9 referendum on splitting the country according to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005, SPEC leaders have taken a number of measures to guard against what it sees as government interference in church affairs.

Many southern Sudanese Christians fear losing citizenship if south Sudan votes for secession in the forthcoming referendum.

A top Sudanese official has said people in south Sudan will no longer be citizens of the north if their region votes for independence. Information Minister Kamal Obeid told state media last month that south Sudanese will be considered citizens of another state if they choose independence, which led many northern-based southern Sudanese to begin packing.

At the same time, President Omar al-Bashir promised full protection for southern Sudanese and their properties in a recent address. His speech was reinforced by Vice President Ali Osman Taha’s address during a political conference in Juba regarding the signing of a security agreement with First Vice President Salva Kiir Mayardit (also president of the semi-autonomous Government of Southern Sudan), but Obeid’s words have not been forgotten.

Akway of SPEC said it is difficult to know what will become of the property.

“Police continue to guard the compound, and nobody knows for sure what the coming days will bring,” Akway said. “With just less than three months left for the South to decide its fate, we are forced to see this move as a serious development against the church in Sudan.”

Report from Compass Direct News

Plinky Prompt: Describe a Time when You Stood up for what you Believed In

Standing meerkat

I generally do stand up for what I believe in. There was a time when I made a stand against a situation in a church because I believed it was heading in the wrong direction. It wasn’t popular, but I believed I was doing the right thing – which I still believe to have been the case. In the end I left because we couldn’t agree and I didn’t want to be the cause of division in the church.

Chinese Christians Blocked from Attending Lausanne Congress

Police threaten or detain some 200 house church members who planned to attend.

DUBLIN, October 15 (CDN) — As organizers prepared for the opening of the Third Lausanne International Congress on World Evangelization tomorrow in Cape Town, South Africa, Chinese police threatened or detained some 200 delegates who had hoped to attend.

After receiving an invitation to attend the event, house church groups in China formed a selection committee and raised significant funds to pay the expenses of their chosen delegates, a source told Compass. Many delegates, however, were “interviewed” by authorities after they applied to attend the Congress, the source said.

When house church member Abraham Liu Guan and four other delegates attempted to leave China via Beijing airport on Sunday (Oct. 10), authorities refused to allow them through customs, reported the Chinese-language Ming Pao News. Officials detained one delegate and confiscated the passports of the other four until Oct. 25, the closing date of the conference.

China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs and the Ministry of Public Security had notified border control staff that the participation of Chinese Christians in the conference threatened state security and ordered them not to allow delegates to leave, Liu told U.S.-based National Public Radio (NPR).

Officials also prevented two house church Christians from Baotou City, Inner Mongolia, from leaving the country, and on Oct. 9 placed one of them in a 15-day detention, the China Aid Association (CAA) reported.

When Fan Yafeng, leader of the Chinese Christian Legal Defense Association and winner of the 2009 John Leland Religious Liberty Award, discussed the harassment with NPR on Tuesday (Oct. 12), officials assigned some 20 police officers to keep him under house arrest.

On Wednesday (Oct. 13), approximately 1,000 police officers were stationed at Beijing International Airport to restrain an estimated 100 house church members who planned to leave for the Congress via Beijing, according to CAA.

CAA also said authorities over the past few months had contacted every delegate, from Han Christians in Beijing to Uyghur Christians in Xinjiang, for questioning, and threatened some family members.

Normal church operations were also affected. The Rev. Xing Jingfu from Changsha in Hunan province told NPR that authorities cited the Lausanne Congress when they recently ordered his church to close.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ma Zhaoxu, in a statement issued to NPR, accused the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization of communicating secretively with members of illegal congregations and not issuing an official invitation to China’s state-controlled church.

According to the Ming Pao report, the Lausanne committee said members of the Three-Self Protestant Movement had asked if they could attend. Delegates, however, were required to sign a document expressing their commitment to evangelism, which members of official churches could not do due to regulations such as an upper limit on the number of people in each church, state certification for preachers, and the confinement of preaching to designated churches in designated areas. House church Christians faced no such limitations.

The first such conference was held in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1974, which produced the influential Lausanne Covenant. The second conference was held in 1989 in Manila. Some 4,000 delegates from 200 countries are expected to attend the third conference in Cape Town.

 

Progress or Repression?

China watchers said there has been a slight easing of restrictions in recent months, accompanied by a call on Sept. 28 from senior Chinese political advisor Du Qinglin for the government to allow the independent development of the official church. Du made the remarks at the 60th anniversary celebrations of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, according to the government-allied Xinhua news agency.

The BBC in August produced a glowing series on the growth of Christianity in China after Chinese authorities gave it unprecedented access to state-sanctioned churches and religious institutions. Religious rights monitor Elizabeth Kendal, however, described this access as part of a propaganda campaign by the Chinese government to reduce criticism of religious freedom policies.

NPR also produced a five-part series on Chinese religions in July. The series attributed the growth of religious adherence to the “collapse of Communist ideology” and pointed out that growth continued despite the fact that evangelism was “still illegal in China today.”

The claims of progress were challenged by an open letter from Pastor Zhang Mingxuan, president of the Chinese Christian House Church Alliance, to Chinese President Hu Jintao on Oct. 1, China’s National Day.

In the letter, published by CAA on Oct. 5, Zhang claimed that Chinese house church Christians respected the law and were “model citizens,” and yet they had become “the target of a group of government bandits … [who] often arrest and beat innocent Christians and wronged citizens.” Further, he added, “House church Christians have been ill-treated simply because they are petitioners to crimes of the government.”

Zhang then listed several recent incidents in which Christians were arrested and sent to labor camps, detained and fined without cause, beaten, interrogated and otherwise abused. He also described the closure or demolition of house churches and the confiscation of personal and church property.

He closed with a mention of Uyghur Christian Alimjan Yimit, “who was sentenced to 15 years in prison because he evangelized among Uyghurs – his very own people.”

Report from Compass Direct News