Grattan on Friday: Hanson’s ‘outsider’ politics a challenge for Turnbull as he sits in ‘sensible centre’

Malcolm Turnbull has reasserted this week that the Liberal Party needs to be in the ‘sensible centre’.
AAP/Lukas Coch

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

Now that the Liberals and commentators have overdosed on a debate about where the party’s founder stood on the centre-right spectrum, could someone go to a shopping centre and ask a dozen people under 40 who Robert Menzies was?

How many would know? And if the mall happened to be in multicultural western Sydney, what chance “Ming” would have any recognition?

This week’s argument may have meaning for the Liberal tribe, and in the context of Malcolm Turnbull’s fightback against the conservatives who are making his life hell. But to many families in the suburbs and the regions, it would likely come across as just irrelevant “insider” stuff.

While a lot of people just shrug impatiently at insider politics, a substantial number have turned to “outsider” players. The challenge to the Coalition vote from the confronting “outsider” Pauline Hanson brand was clear in polls out this week.

Newspoll had Pauline Hanson’s One Nation on 11% for the second poll running. This was ahead of the Greens, who were at 10% in the latest poll, and 9% in the previous one.

ReachTEL polling commissioned by The Australia Institute, a progressive think-tank, and done on June 8 in the seats of six ministers and the prime minister, shows very diverse but some substantial results for One Nation. The figures are: Cook (Scott Morrison) 16.7%; Curtin (Julie Bishop) 4.3%; Dickson (Peter Dutton) 14.1%; Flinders (Greg Hunt) 8.9%; Kooyong (Josh Frydenberg) 3.6%; Sturt (Christopher Pyne) 3.8%; and Wentworth (Turnbull) 8.1%. If the “undecideds” were distributed, the figures would be higher.

According to polling analyst John Stirton: “In 27 separate polls this year (from Newspoll, ReachTEL, Essential and YouGov 50 Acres) One Nation has averaged 9% of the primary vote, although there is some polarisation with Newspoll and ReachTEL tending to be above average (10-11%) while Essential and YouGov have been below average (7-8%).”

Although it’s unclear how much of the One Nation vote would hold at an election, the Newspoll level should be of concern to the Coalition, especially as the minor party has had a lot of bad publicity recently from internal scandals.

It’s a national figure for a party whose support is lumpy. We know it is particularly strong in regional Queensland. How strong will be tested in the coming state election, when the Liberal National Party (LNP) will be looking to harvest One Nation preferences, formally or informally.

Unlike the situation with the Greens and Labor, where the ALP can rely on receiving the overwhelming bulk of Green preferences, the One Nation flow on to the LNP will be less disciplined. Some One Nation voters would be former Labor supporters.

The test major parties face from “outsider” players is explored in a new book by respected British political commentator Steve Richards, The Rise of the Outsiders: How Mainstream Politics Lost its Way. He looks at the phenomenon across national boundaries, including a modest reference to Hanson and the Australian experience.

In an era of globalisation and rapid change, the answer to the question “who rules?” can be unclear. Richards notes that insiders’ power is less than it looks. “Elections, opinion polls, the media, constitutional checks and balances and the near-impossibility of managing a party’s internal tensions mean that elected power is fragile and often fleeting,” he writes.

“Most leaders or governments in democracies rule precariously, partly because they pay so much attention to the voters.

“Yet voters regard the democratically elected as out of touch, part of a lofty, arrogant elite. The opposite is closer to the truth.

”… Elected leaders rule in an era of extreme mistrust. If they do not do x, y or z, the instinct of some voters is to assume that those they elected are liars … At the very least some voters feel ignored and overlooked … The instinct to mistrust elected leaders is fuelled by some media outlets …”

The outsiders offer simplicity and clarity, albeit their messages are simplistic. They are fancy-free and so can be self-contradictory in the positions they take – although things become more complicated if, as with Donald Trump, they win power and become the new insiders. (Hanson has a lot of Senate power, but it doesn’t seem to have affected the view of her as an outsider.)

Richards argues that one inadvertently positive contribution the outsiders have made “is to trigger constructive questions from mainstream parties about what form the centre ground takes, and tentative questions about the role of government in a globalised economy”.

In the Australian context, this week Turnbull has reasserted that the Liberal Party needs to be in the “sensible centre”. We have recently also had the Coalition embrace a more active role for government than the Liberals would have advocated three or four years ago – such as a stated willingness to invest in a coal-fired power station, and the use of export controls to ensure a bigger supply of gas for the local market.

It seems obvious that the best place for the Coalition to pitch its tent is the “sensible centre”. That, we know – or believe – is where elections are decided. Turnbull is competing for swinging votes that could go to either him or Bill Shorten.

Many of these voters are pragmatic, uninterested in ideological wars, or in what Menzies might say if he were alive now. They just want things done – about power prices, health, education, whatever.

But that 11% is a different kettle of fish, or maybe it contains several kettles. They are deeply cynical about today’s political process and major parties; the siren call of Hanson, and some in the media, picks up on that.

These people, like some in the Liberal base – and they are overlapping cohorts – will be more drawn to Tony Abbott’s manifesto than Turnbull’s sensible centre.

The Turnbull government has genuflected to them by playing gesture politics in immigration, revamping foreign worker arrangements, and proposing the English test for potential citizens be ridiculously tough. It will have a careful eye to the demands of the coal lobby as it tries to land its clean energy target.

But those attracted to “outsider” politics would prefer the Abbott-style bald negativity toward immigrants and renewables.

The Liberals enjoy pointing to the two core constituencies Labor has to juggle – lower- and middle-income workers, and affluent inner-city progressives. But the Coalition has its own dual constituencies – the mainstreamers, and the punishers on the right whose power is a protest vote.

https://www.podbean.com/media/player/b9kr9-6cf745?from=yiiadmin

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Turnbull is right to link the Liberals with the centre – but is the centre where it used to be?

Malcolm Turnbull’s speech reminded his Liberal colleagues that he has not stolen the party and his leadership is legitimately Liberal.
Reuters/Hannah Mckay

Carol Johnson, University of Adelaide

It is a sign of how serious the divisions have become in the Liberal Party that speaking the truth about Robert Menzies is now depicted as making a provocative attack on the Liberal right.

Yet that is the situation in which Malcolm Turnbull found himself after giving his Disraeli Prize speech in London. As Turnbull pointed out in that speech, Menzies intentionally avoided calling the new party “conservative” in case that gave rise to misconceptions. Rather, Turnbull cites Menzies’ statement that they:

… took the name “Liberal” because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary but believing in the individual, his right and his enterprise, and rejecting the socialist panacea.

As the leading academic expert on Robert Menzies, Judith Brett, has pointed out, Menzies recognised when the party was founded in 1944 that there was a strong public sentiment in favour of building a progressive, new post-war society that was far better than the old.

In other words, it was a party that pledged to reject socialism, but wouldn’t necessarily stand in the path of social progress.

In short, Turnbull is attempting to reclaim both Menzies and the Liberal Party he played a key role in founding, for a centrist rather than reactionary position. He is gently taking issue with Tony Abbott and those conservatives in the party who have focused on undermining, rather than working with him, regardless of the damage this might do to the party’s electoral prospects.

I say gently because, as even the arch-conservative Eric Abetz acknowledges, Turnbull also cites Tony Abbott’s earlier phrase that the “sensible centre” is the place to be. Nonetheless, Turnbull is reminding such conservatives that he has not stolen the party, and his leadership is legitimately Liberal.

There is a long tradition of attempting to appeal to the centre in Australian politics, not least in the hope that centrist politicians will be able to harvest votes from both major parties. Turnbull can legitimately argue that many of the “small-l” liberal positions he is associated with (despite his more recent concessions to the right) are in line with popular opinion. Same-sex marriage is an obvious case in point.

There was also a vibrant small-l liberal tradition on issues such as homosexuality in the party in the 1970s, prior to John Howard’s conservative ascendancy.

Nonetheless, there were some elephants in the room in London when Turnbull gave his speech.

It is open to debate what a modern “Menzian” position would be in regard to issues such as same-sex marriage or racial equality. After all, Menzies, like Labor prime ministers John Curtin and Ben Chifley before him, continued to support the White Australia Policy. Male homosexuality was illegal under state law for all of Menzies’ prime ministership.

Turnbull refers to Menzies’ “forgotten people”. However, the famous speech in which Menzies articulated that concept assumed (as Curtin and Chifley also did) that employees would continue to be predominantly male, and women would largely be in the home.

Turnbull clearly assumes that a modern “sensible centre” position would have kept pace with changing social attitudes. But at least on some issues, other Liberals will disagree.

The bigger elephant in the room is the issue of Menzies’ economic beliefs at the time the Liberal Party was founded, and what a modern day centrist position on economic policy would be. After all, contemporary Australian voters seem to be concerned about their economic futures, the power of big business, and cuts to social services.

Turnbull does briefly acknowledge in his speech that, by modern standards, Menzies:

… was hardly an economic liberal. He believed in a highly regulated economy with high tariffs, a fixed exchange rate, centralised wage fixing and generally much more Government involvement in the economy than we would be comfortable with.

Indeed, Menzies was more of a Keynesian economically, not a market liberal like Turnbull.

Furthermore, Menzies characterised the middle class as the “forgotten people” partly because he believed that unskilled workers were not forgotten but were already well-protected by unions and had “their wages and conditions safeguarded by popular law”. Meanwhile, the rich were “able to protect themselves”.

While strongly supporting individual endeavour, he argued that the new politics should not “return to the old and selfish notions of laissez-faire”. Rather, “our social and industrial laws will be increased. There will be more law, not less; more control, not less.”

Menzies was strongly anti-communist and anti-socialist, but he was not a neoliberal.

Voters could be forgiven for thinking that at least some of Menzies’ words sound more like those of the contemporary Labor Party than the modern-day Liberal Party. The Liberal Party itself acknowledges that a belief in “social equality” was one of the principles on which the party was founded.

However, despite some concessions in this year’s budget, Turnbull may have his work cut out trying to convince centrist voters that his economic liberalism can adequately address today’s scourge of rising inequality. Keynesian-influenced solutions are on the rise again in the wake of the global financial crisis.

Turnbull argued in his speech that the terms “left” and “right” had begun to lose all meaning. However, there is another, more unpalatable truth that he may need to face. It may be more that “left” and “right” are moving conceptually, because the “centre” has shifted too.

Carol Johnson, Professor of Politics, University of Adelaide

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Turnbull finds the ‘sensible centre’ a slippery patch

The reference to Tony Abbott in his London speech gave Malcolm Turnbull some body armour.
Lukas Coch/AAP

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

It’s passing strange when Eric Abetz, the navy-blue conservative sacked from the ministry by Malcolm Turnbull, is out defending a prime ministerial speech on the Liberal Party’s history and positioning.

But, then again, these are indeed the strangest of times on the non-left side of federal politics.

Turnbull’s Monday address in London to the centre-right Policy Exchange think-tank presented a fairly conventional set of references to Robert Menzies’ founding of the Liberal Party, most of which you’d find in the standard texts on the party’s past.

He noted that Menzies: “went to great pains not to call his new political party, consolidating the centre right of Australian politics, ‘conservative’ – but rather the Liberal Party which he firmly anchored in the centre of Australian politics.

“He wanted to stand apart from the big money, business establishment politics of traditional ‘conservative’ parties of the right, as well as from the socialist tradition of the Australian Labor Party, the political wing of the union movement.”

He quoted Menzies’ words: “We took the name ‘Liberal’ because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary but believing in the individual, his right and his enterprise, and rejecting the socialist panacea.”

Turnbull declared: “The sensible centre, to use my predecessor Tony Abbott’s phrase, was the place to be and it remains the place to be now.”

Talk of the two streams in the Liberal Party (John Howard’s “broad church”) is familiar. Wars over Menzies’ philosophical legacy have long been waged among the faithful. Menzies is an icon that both conservatives and liberals in the party try to claim for their own. And every Liberal leader wants, indeed needs, to link to Menzies.

In fact they can all find succour from the Menzies well – he was prime minister for a long time, a pragmatist, and dealt with and responded to varying circumstances.

If Turnbull on Monday was having a calculated slap at conservatives in the party, it was a pretty mild one. If he was emphasising he’s a centrist, that is hardly a surprise, although when he translates it into policy it annoys the hell out of those on the right.

Turnbull had made the same point in his April 1 speech to the Victorian Liberal council, when he told it that Menzies knew the future “was in the sensible centre”. “Menzies was proudly liberal and conservative and he understood that you build on the continuity of the great institutions which gave our democracy birth … but above all, you build from the centre, bringing people together and that is our commitment.”

The reference to Abbott in his London speech gave Turnbull some body armour.

It was actually a latish insert. It was in the speech Turnbull delivered, and in the version sent out at 3:32am EST. But the excerpts handed out very much earlier to the travelling media and reported in Tuesday morning’s papers in Australia did not contain it.

As it turned out, it was a judicious addition.

Abetz picked up on the Abbott reference to dispute a media report that said Turnbull’s remarks were likely to inflame the internal party battle. “I’m not sure how Prime Minister Turnbull quoting Prime Minister Abbott approvingly could be inflammatory.”

Of course everything Turnbull now says is taken as inflammatory. Being ready to combust is the default position of Turnbull’s party enemies (though not Abetz or some other notables on this occasion), the right in general, and a good section of the media.

Former Victorian Liberal premier Jeff Kennett was scathing, questioning why “Malcolm has chosen to actually have a brawl with his own from overseas”, showing “an appalling lack of political judgment”. Shock-jock Alan Jones described the speech as “rather indecipherable”. Former Liberal senator Cory Bernardi claimed: “I have no doubt that Sir Robert Menzies would be joining the Australian Conservatives.”

While what he said in the London speech was perfectly reasonable, as well as being previously walked territory, whether he should have said it is open to argument.

The cautious approach would have been for Turnbull, when making an address overseas, to avoid anything that could lead to trouble in the ranks. Until the speech, his trip had given him a respite from the wrangling.

On the other hand, if Turnbull can’t say a few obvious – indeed can we say sensible – things, he will have forfeited his leadership in everything but the title.

https://www.podbean.com/media/player/b9kr9-6cf745?from=yiiadmin

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

High Court asked to declare Manus detention illegal as 859 detainees seek their day in court

Amy Maguire, University of Newcastle

A writ of summons was registered in Australia’s High Court on Wednesday on behalf of 859 detainees at the Manus Island detention centre. This is a class action initiated against Australia, Papua New Guinea, the two countries’ immigration ministers, PNG’s attorney-general and the companies that administer the centre.

The detainees want the High Court to use its original jurisdiction in judicial review of their transfer to and detention on Manus Island. They seek an injunction to prevent their removal to Nauru or elsewhere until the court hears the matter.

Recent background

This action follows the PNG Supreme Court finding that the detention on Manus Island is unconstitutional. The PNG Constitution contains a Charter of Rights that strictly limits the circumstances under which people may be deprived of liberty.

As Australia forcibly transferred the detainees, they were not responsible for their own unlawful entry to PNG. Therefore, no constitutional exception could permit their legal detention.

Following the Supreme Court decision, PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill announced the Manus Island centre would close. He asked Australia to “make alternative arrangements for the asylum seekers”.

O’Neill’s Australian counterpart, Malcolm Turnbull, said Australia would not accept the detainees. Australia’s immigration minister, Peter Dutton, described them as PNG’s responsibility.

Basis for the claim

The detainees argue their detention is illegal on international, constitutional, administrative and civil law grounds. They are asking the High Court to declare that their detention constitutes:

• forcible deportation, due to their expulsion from Australia and transfer to Manus Island, contrary to international law;

• arbitrary and indefinite detention, due to Australia’s “no advantage” principle, in a country that lacks the legal safeguards or competence to adequately protect or process asylum seekers;

• torture (an international crime that can never be excused), inhumane and degrading treatment;

• rape and other crimes of sexual violence;

• denial of fundamental human rights, particularly a fair hearing and legal representation;

• murder (notably the violent killing of Reza Barati in February 2014), grievous bodily harm, assault and robbery; and

• unlawful death, false imprisonment, trespass and negligence.

What are the detainees seeking?

The detainees request relief via the ancient writ of habeas corpus. They want to be brought before the High Court so its judges can determine whether their detention is legal.

The detainees hope the court will then issue a writ of mandamus. This would order the government to bring them to Australia to process their refugee claims.

Finally, the detainees seek a writ of prohibition, to prevent their transfer to any other place until the case has been decided and their claims assessed.

The detainees are seeking damages and costs. They may also take action in PNG for compensation. A PNG legal representative of many detainees estimates that up to A$1 billion could be owed.

This action echoes earlier high-profile claims, like the Tampa case. In such cases, human rights lawyers seek to vindicate the rights of asylum seekers who lack access to Australian courts due to their forcible offshore detention.

Other advocates have sought the aid of international courts. They argue Australia’s actions against asylum seekers who seek to arrive here by boat inflict crimes against humanity.

The High Court will hear the application on May 23.

Australia’s human rights problem

Around half of those detained on Manus Island have already been assessed to be genuine refugees. Yet most remain in detention, in part because their safety is at risk if they leave the centre.

The refugees would not face the same level of risk were they to be resettled in Australia. Yet PNG law has offered more substantial rights protection to them than Australian law.

The stark contrast between Australian and PNG law is in the relative degree of formal protection for human rights. Whereas PNG has a Charter of Rights enshrined in its Constitution, Australia lacks constitutional protection. Its government has rejected legislative protection for human rights.

Though Australia professes deep commitment to human rights standards in its foreign relations, it refrains from entrenching these international norms domestically. This position reflects a cultural attitude that the Australian “fair go” is sufficient protection against the excessive use of government power.

The experiences of Indigenous peoples in Australia before the law put the lie to this belief. And if adequate human rights protections are not the universal experience of people in Australia, what hope for asylum seekers who lack access to Australian courts and are demonised in public discourse?

Hope for success

The most recent High Court action challenging Australia’s offshore detention arrangements in Nauru failed. The court found the government was acting in accordance with its constitutional and legislative powers.

However, the majority of judges did regard Australia as bearing at least some responsibility for the detention of asylum seekers in Nauru. This may undermine the government’s argument that detainees on Manus Island are PNG’s sole responsibility.

This new action’s distinguishing feature is a request that the High Court use its universal jurisdiction for the first time. The detainees argue that Australia has no legal power to forcibly deport and arbitrarily and indefinitely detain asylum seekers in torturous, inhuman or degrading conditions without legal rights.

If the claim succeeds, it will entirely undermine Australia’s inhumane practices in relation to “those who come across the seas”.

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Amy Maguire thanks Jay Williams, barrister-at-law of Frederick Jordan Chambers, for providing the original writ of summons used to initiate this action in the High Court.

Amy Maguire, Senior Lecturer in International Law, University of Newcastle

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Australia & the Manus Island Asylum Detention Centre

Tanzania: Terrorism Spreads to Country

The links below are to articles reporting on a terrorist attack in Tanzania, which is becoming a new centre for islamic terrorism.

For more visit:
– http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/tanzania/10039692/Saudis-arrested-over-Tanzania-church-bombing.html
– http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22425364
– http://www.persecution.org/2013/05/07/two-killed-and-over-50-wounded-in-tanzanian-church-bombing/

PAKISTAN: ISLAMABAD CHURCH ON THE THRESHOLD OF WAR

By Elizabeth Kendal

Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin

Special to ASSIST News Service

The Margala Hills are all that lie between al-Qaeda-Taliban jihadists and their goal: nuclear-armed Islamabad. While most popular media reports give the impression that this crisis has only recently emerged, this is far from the case. The reality must be absorbed and lessons must be learned.

In 2003, as part of their ‘War on Terror’ alliance, America and Pakistan agreed that the Pakistani Army be given the job of eliminating al-Qaeda and Taliban elements in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Agencies (FATA) of North West Frontier Province (NWFP). However, a high death toll — including the loss of possibly 3000 soldiers — weakened both Army moral and public resolve, creating domestic political problems for then-president General Musharraf.

In pursuit of political gain, Musharraf brokered ‘land-for-peace’ deals with the al-Qaeda-Taliban alliance. In February 2005 South Waziristan was ceded, followed by North Waziristan in September 2006. With this ‘peace’, the military withdrew and jihadists were released from prison with compensation on a mere pledge not to engage in terrorism. If there were a turning point in the ‘War on Terror’, this unconditional surrender of Waziristan was surely it, for the power of the al-Qaeda-Taliban alliance has grown in both Afghanistan and Pakistan ever since.

The jihadists were never going to be pacified so long as their goal — the total Islamisation and Talibanisation of fortress Afghanistan and nuclear-armed Pakistan — remained unchanged and unrealised. The ‘Islamic Republic of Waziristan’ simply became a terrorist sanctuary and launching pad for further advances. Within months several more tribal areas had fallen under Taliban control. (‘Land-for-peace’ deals with agenda-driven fundamentalist Islamists and jihadists secure incremental Islamist advance, not peace.)

In July 2007 the government’s assault on the Islamists of the Lal Masjid (the Red Mosque in the centre of Islamabad) left some 100 Islamists dead. (The Islamists say thousands died, including children.) Consequently in September 2007 Al-Qaeda declared jihad against the government of Pakistan and the war was on in earnest. This war pits a determined al-Qaeda-Taliban alliance (with numerous high-level sympathisers) against an unstable and equivocating Pakistani government and a conflicted and divided Pakistani Army plagued by Pashtun and Sunni defections.

In the 18 months since, the jihadists have held or captured all the tribal areas. In February 2009 President Asif Ali Zardari brokered a ‘sharia-for-peace’ deal with the Taliban in Malakand Division which comprises one third of NWFP and includes the glorious, albeit Taliban-held, Swat Valley. All of NWFP is now either ceded to the Taliban or under some degree of Taliban control or influence.

Emboldened by its Malakand victory and its advances in strategic Peshawar, the Taliban launched its Spring Offensive with a further escalation. In early April a more united Taliban (see RLP 518, 23 Feb 2009) surged with little resistance south east from Swat (towards Islamabad) into Buner District in a ‘blitzkreig’. From there they quickly infiltrated Haripur District which borders the outskirts of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. According to most Western and Indian analysis and intelligence, Pakistan’s fall is inevitable and imminent, although according to Pakistan, this assessment is ‘ridiculous’.

The Church in Pakistan’s NWFP is already suffering severe repression and persecution under Taliban tyranny. Christians there are living in fear and paying jizya, the’tax’ or protection money demanded of subjugated Jews and Christians in the Quran (Sura 9:29). Their lives are always in the balance. The Church in Islamabad stands on the brink of the same fate. If the al-Qaeda-Taliban alliance manages to capture Islamabad in the months ahead, the world will instantly become a different place, and the Church in Islamabad and across Pakistan will see suffering and persecution unlike anything it has ever known before.

Report from the Christian Telegraph

PAKISTAN: LAHORE – Another Deadly Terrorist Attack

There was another terrible terrorist attack in Lahore, Pakistan, today. Terrorists have attacked a police training centre and killed some 20 people and injured another 90 from initial reports coming out of Pakistan.

Hopefully this attack will provoke the Pakistani government into seriously dealing with the Taliban and terrorists operating from within Pakistan. There seems to be a widely held view (including my own) that there are many within Pakistan supporting both the Taliban and terrorism – including a number of people with the Pakistan security forces.

BELOW: Some footage of the attack

CHRISTIANS RELEASED IN ERITREA; THOUSANDS REMAIN BEHIND BARS

Thousands of Eritrean believers are languishing in military prisons, in labor camps, and in shipping containers in the open desert, reports MNN.

Carl Moeller with Open Doors reports a spot of good news: “Two elderly members of the Kale Hiwot church, who were arrested last November and held at a military concentration camp, have been released, apparently on bail. In addition to that, we also learned that another gentleman, Solomon Mengese, was released.”

Their detentions were linked to Christian activities. Though the government denies religious persecution, Open Doors notes a heavy concentration of arrests and detainment of Bible-believing Christians.

The Kale Hiwot members were men in their 80s, arrested in November, and jailed in Mitire-camp. The camp is a military concentration camp in northeastern Eritrea. Moeller says that the area is believed to be where many Christians are being held.

Mengese is a Full Gospel Church member and gas station owner who was imprisoned for six months in Asmara’s Police Station number 2. He was released two weeks ago.

Meanwhile reliable sources in Eritrea confirmed the number of Christian prisoners in Wi’a Military Training Centre. According to Open Doors, among the 2,900 believers imprisoned, there are 270 Evangelical Christians–including 135 women–kept at Wi’a.

Their sources say the prisoners are facing miserable circumstances as they refuse to deny their faith.

According to the sources, Wi’a Military Training Centre also holds 27 Muslim prisoners who were arrested in Assab for opposing the government-appointed Mufti. They have been in the centre for one year and six months and are mostly kept underground, separate from other religious and military prisoners.

Open Doors’ sources were also able to confirm that the number of Evangelical Christians kept at Massawa Police station is 50, including 15 women. According to these sources, the relatives and friends of the prisoners may bring them food once a day, but they are not allowed to see the prisoners.

Eritrea banned all independent Protestant churches in 2002. Only Islam and the Eritrean Orthodox, Catholic and Lutheran Christian denominations were given official recognition. Buildings of all other churches were closed, and private gatherings in homes were banned. Worshippers caught disobeying these restrictions have faced arrest and torture in prison camps notorious for their horrific circumstances.

Moeller asks believers to “pray that the church in Eritrea will continue to stand strong in the midst of this. We need to pray for those imprisoned, that they would know that they are not forgotten. And third, we need to pray that the denominations that have been sanctioned by the government would speak out on behalf of those who have been imprisoned.”

Report from the Christian telegraph

CHRISTIANS JAILED IN UZBEKISTAN AFTER A MEAL IN PRIVATE HOUSE

Uzbekistan has since the beginning of March imposed short jail terms on four Protestants, as well as detaining three more in a centre for the homeless, Forum 18 News Service has learnt.

Three Protestants were each jailed for 15 days, after police raided a meal in a private home where the three were present, and three more were held in a homelessness centre for between four and eleven days.

Asked why individuals must ask for permission to gather for a religious purpose, the judge told Forum 18 that “I am not a law-maker, and I don’t want to discuss the law.” In a separate case, a Baptist was jailed for 10 days after some 20 officials from various state agencies – including the Presidential Administration – raided a prayer meeting in a registered church.

Officials told church members that they need special permission for any services apart from those on Sundays, though Forum 18 can find no requirement for this in published laws or regulations.

Report from the Christian Telegraph