Attorney-General Christian Porter declares alleged rape ‘did not happen’ – and he won’t stand down

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

Attorney-General Christian Porter has identified himself as the minister accused of historical rape but declared categorically that the 1988 claimed assault “simply did not happen”.

A highly emotional Porter told a Perth press conference he had not slept with the then 16-year-old who made the allegation more than three decades later. “We didn’t have anything of that nature happen between us,” he said.

Porter declared he was not standing down from his position as first law officer.

“If I stand down from my position as Attorney-General because of an allegation about something that simply did not happen, then any person in Australia can lose their career, their job, their life’s work based on nothing more than an accusation that appears in print.

“If I were to resign and that set a new standard, there wouldn’t be much need for an attorney-general anyway because there would be no rule of law left to protect in this country.”

Porter will take a couple of weeks leave to “assess and hopefully improve my own mental health”.

“I think I will be able to return from that and do my job.”

He said he has been asked by colleagues “Are you OK?”. His answer was “I really don’t know. I am not ashamed to say it – I am going to seek some professional assessment and assistance on answering that question over the next few weeks.”

Porter said that in the past few days, while he had remained silent during the legal process, he had been subject to “the most wild, intense and unrestrained series of accusations I can remember in modern Australian politics.”

He said he had never had the allegation put to him in any substantive form before last Friday’s publication. “No-one put anything in any detail to me seeking a response.” He had never seen the woman’s statement, although a statement from her was included with the letter sent to Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week. The ABC published the allegation late Friday.

On the incident itself, Porter said when he was 17 and she was 16 they were both on the Australian schools debating team for a competition in Sydney. He remembered her as an “intelligent, bright, happy, person.”

He was noticeably reluctant to go into detail. Under questioning, he said he did not think he had ever been alone with her, but admitted “it’s not impossible,” while saying he was never in her room.

He recalled a memory, sparked by what he had read of the material – “I don’t think any of us had ever ironed a shirt before, and I recall, she showed us how to do that, I remember that.”

It was a team of four, including three boys and “we did what normal teenagers would do”.

“I remember two evenings that week. One was a night at one of the colleges with bowls of prawns, which sticks in my mind. I do remember a formal dinner and going out dancing sounds about right.”

He said he was not in contact with the woman – who took her own life last year – in subsequent decades.

Porter began his news conference by referring to the woman’s parents, saying he hoped they would understand that in denying the allegation “I do not mean to impose anything more upon your grief”.

He rejected the volley of calls into an independent inquiry into the allegation.

“What would that inquiry ask me to do? To disprove something that didn’t happen 33 years ago.”

“I honestly don’t know what I would say to that inquiry. Of course I can’t.”

Porter said he had spoken to Scott Morrison and had his full backing.

He said he was deeply sorry for the fallout the issue has had for his colleagues.

“My colleagues have become the target of allegations and speculation themselves. My colleagues are my friends. And I’m deeply sorry to each of them for that.”

The issue exploded last week when friends of the woman wrote to Morrison and several other parliamentarians demanding an inquiry into her allegation. The letter included a statement the woman had made, detailing her alleged experience.

The woman went to the police a year ago but had not made a formal complaint.

The allegation has derailed the government for a week, when it was already struggling to contain the fallout from former staffer Brittany Higgins’ allegation she was raped by a colleague in the office of the then Defence Industry Minister Linda Reynolds in 2019.

On Monday, Morrison said the woman’s allegation against Porter was a matter for the police. The federal police referred it to the NSW police. The NSW police said on Tuesday that, “based on information provided to NSW Police, there is insufficient admissible evidence to proceed.

“As such, NSW Police Force has determined the matter is now closed.”

Porter denied the allegation to Morrison on Wednesday of last week.

The ABC’s Four Corners was pursuing the woman’s story last year, but in the end was not in a position to include it in its November program “Inside the Canberra Bubble”. That program reported sexist comments made by Porter as a young man.

Porter entered federal parliament in 2013 after a high profile career in Western Australian politics, where he served as attorney-general and treasurer.

Federally, he was social services minister in 2015-2017, before becoming attorney-general. After the 2019 election, industrial relations was added to his responsibilities.

Australian of the Year Grace Tame, an advocate for victims of sexual abuse, answering questions at the National Press Club, criticised Morrison over invoking his wife Jenny’s counsel that he should think of the Higgins’ situation as a father. “It shouldn’t take having children to have a conscience,” Tame said.

Michaelia Cash will be acting attorney-general while Porter is on leave.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

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

View from The Hill: Despite his denial, Christian Porter will struggle with the ‘Caesar’s wife’ test

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

Christian Porter’s denial of the historical rape allegation is unequivocal, but it won’t draw a line under the issue for him or for the Morrison government.

Porter declares he’s determined to stay in his job, saying to quit would mean anyone could lose their career “based on nothing more than an accusation that appears in print”.

It’s true there is little natural justice in this situation. But in politics, there are often many competing factors.

Porter is right that it’s difficult to recall circumstances like this present crisis, with its passion and fevered coverage, and frenzied abuse via social media. And the worst of it is, there’s no way of definitively finding out what did or did not occur, and so where “justice” lies.

Attorney-General vigorously denied the rape allegations in an emotional press conference.
Richard Wainwright/AAP

A woman who is now dead claimed she was raped by Porter when they were both teenagers. From what she told people and wrote, she had no doubt it happened. Porter says he has no doubt it did not happen.

The police can’t determine the truth, because the woman is deceased, and an independent inquiry wouldn’t be able to do so either.

The claim and counter claim will be fought out in the court of public opinion and it will be an ugly contest.

Porter is not just any minister: his role as attorney-general sets him apart. He is the country’s first law officer – which means he must be above any suspicion. It’s the old “Caesar’s wife” test and – properly – the bar is high.

However unfair it might be, Porter will now never be above suspicion, at least in the minds of many.

Before he was a politician, Porter was a crown prosecutor. He has been around court rooms, and so used to tense situations.

Of course his news conference was not a court room and things are different when you are defending yourself, but it was notable how rattled he was.

---

Read more:
Has Christian Porter been subjected to a ‘trial by media’? No, the media did its job of being a watchdog

---

He wanted to avoid the details of that January 1988 time when the four teenagers were in Sydney as part of a debating team (which raises the idle question, where are the other two team members now and what do they think?). When pushed by journalists, some of his answers were fumbling.

What state he will be in after a period of leave remains to be seen, because it is likely the pressure on him will increase rather than ease.

Then there’s the question of the impact on the whole government. It is extraordinary what a toll the Brittany Higgins’ affair and the allegation against Porter are taking. It amounts to an enormous distraction for Morrison.

The Morrison government is reeling after the Brittany Higgins’ affair and the allegation against Porter.
Mick Tsikas/AAP

All this at a time when the government is struggling with the early days of the vaccine rollout.

And of course, the positive news has been put in the shade – Wednesday’s economic growth of 3.1% for the December quarter, which is a seriously good performance by any international standards.

Morrison is loyal to his ministers – or at least he understands that to put political blood in the water by cutting a minister loose is never without consequences.

When it is the attorney-general, that would be a huge step.

But asked this week whether he believed Porter’s denial, Morrison would not commit himself. “That is a matter for the police,” he said.

Significantly, Morrison didn’t send the woman’s statement to Porter after he received it in the letter from her friends on Friday. Porter said he still hasn’t seen it.

Porter’s spokesman said on Wednesday night that to have received the statement or documents when he was the subject of them, and they were matters for law enforcement agencies, would have been “inappropriate”. This seems a stretch.

Porter says he has Morrison’s support. The question is whether he will retain it in the days to come.

There is this hiatus, while Porter is on stress leave, during which Morrison can assess the situation.

He must decide whether he will remain dug in behind his embattled minister or encourage him to conclude that, despite what he said in his statement, his position is untenable.

---

Read more:
Senator Hanson-Young’s defamation win reminds us how the law can silence sexual slurs and raise survivors’ voices

---

---

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call the 1800 Respect national helpline on 1800 737 732 or Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

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

Bushfires, bots and arson claims: Australia flung in the global disinformation spotlight

Timothy Graham, Queensland University of Technology and Tobias R. Keller, Queensland University of Technology

In the first week of 2020, hashtag #ArsonEmergency became the focal point of a new online narrative surrounding the bushfire crisis.

The message: the cause is arson, not climate change.

Police and bushfire services (and some journalists) have contradicted this claim.

We studied about 300 Twitter accounts driving the #ArsonEmergency hashtag to identify inauthentic behaviour. We found many accounts using #ArsonEmergency were behaving “suspiciously”, compared to those using #AustraliaFire and #BushfireAustralia.

Accounts peddling #ArsonEmergency carried out activity similar to what we’ve witnessed in past disinformation campaigns, such as the coordinated behaviour of Russian trolls during the 2016 US presidential election.

Bots, trolls and trollbots

The most effective disinformation campaigns use bot and troll accounts to infiltrate genuine political discussion, and shift it towards a different “master narrative”.

Bots and trolls have been a thorn in the side of fruitful political debate since Twitter’s early days. They mimic genuine opinions, akin to what a concerned citizen might display, with a goal of persuading others and gaining attention.

Bots are usually automated (acting without constant human oversight) and perform simple functions, such as retweeting or repeatedly pushing one type of content.

Troll accounts are controlled by humans. They try to stir controversy, hinder healthy debate and simulate fake grassroots movements. They aim to persuade, deceive and cause conflict.

We’ve observed both troll and bot accounts spouting disinformation regarding the bushfires on Twitter. We were able to distinguish these accounts as being inauthentic for two reasons.

First, we used sophisticated software tools including tweetbotornot, Botometer, and Bot Sentinel.

There are various definitions for the word “bot” or “troll”. Bot Sentinel says:

Propaganda bots are pieces of code that utilize Twitter API to automatically follow, tweet, or retweet other accounts bolstering a political agenda. Propaganda bots are designed to be polarizing and often promote content intended to be deceptive… Trollbot is a classification we created to describe human controlled accounts who exhibit troll-like behavior.

Some of these accounts frequently retweet known propaganda and fake news accounts, and they engage in repetitive bot-like activity. Other trollbot accounts target and harass specific Twitter accounts as part of a coordinated harassment campaign. Ideology, political affiliation, religious beliefs, and geographic location are not factors when determining the classification of a Twitter account.

These machine learning tools compared the behaviour of known bots and trolls with the accounts tweeting the hashtags #ArsonEmergency, #AustraliaFire, and #BushfireAustralia. From this, they provided a “score” for each account suggesting how likely it was to be a bot or troll account.

We also manually analysed the Twitter activity of suspicious accounts and the characteristics of their profiles, to validate the origins of #ArsonEmergency, as well as the potential motivations of the accounts spreading the hashtag.

Who to blame?

Unfortunately, we don’t know who is behind these accounts, as we can only access trace data such as tweet text and basic account information.

This graph shows how many times #ArsonEmergency was tweeted between December 31 last year and January 8 this year:

On the vertical axis is the number of tweets over time which featured #ArsonEmergency. On January 7, there were 4726 tweets.
Author provided

Previous bot and troll campaigns have been thought to be the work of foreign interference, such as Russian trolls, or PR firms hired to distract and manipulate voters.

The New York Times has also reported on perceptions that media magnate Rupert Murdoch is influencing Australia’s bushfire debate.

---

Read more:
Weather bureau says hottest, driest year on record led to extreme bushfire season

---

Weeding-out inauthentic behaviour

In late November, some Twitter accounts began using #ArsonEmergency to counter evidence that climate change is linked to the severity of the bushfire crisis.

Below is one of the earliest examples of an attempt to replace #ClimateEmergency with #ArsonEmergency. The accounts tried to get #ArsonEmergency trending to drown out dialogue acknowledging the link between climate change and bushfires.

We suspect the origins of the #ArsonEmergency debacle can be traced back to a few accounts.
Author provided

The hashtag was only tweeted a few times in 2019, but gained traction this year in a sustained effort by about 300 accounts.

A much larger portion of bot and troll-like accounts pushed #ArsonEmergency, than they did #AustraliaFire and #BushfireAustralia.

The narrative was then adopted by genuine accounts who furthered its spread.

On multiple occasions, we noticed suspicious accounts countering expert opinions while using the #ArsonEmergency hashtag.

The inauthentic accounts engaged with genuine users in an effort to persuade them.
author provided

Bad publicity

Since media coverage has shone light on the disinformation campaign, #ArsonEmergency has gained even more prominence, but in a different light.

Some journalists are acknowledging the role of disinformation bushfire crisis – and countering narrative the Australia has an arson emergency. However, the campaign does indicate Australia has a climate denial problem.

What’s clear to me is that Australia has been propelled into the global disinformation battlefield.

---

Read more:
Watching our politicians fumble through the bushfire crisis, I’m overwhelmed by déjà vu

---

Keep your eyes peeled

It’s difficult to debunk disinformation, as it often contains a grain of truth. In many cases, it leverages people’s previously held beliefs and biases.

Humans are particularly vulnerable to disinformation in times of emergency, or when addressing contentious issues like climate change.

Online users, especially journalists, need to stay on their toes.

The accounts we come across on social media may not represent genuine citizens and their concerns. A trending hashtag may be trying to mislead the public.

Right now, it’s more important than ever for us to prioritise factual news from reliable sources – and identify and combat disinformation. The Earth’s future could depend on it.

Timothy Graham, Senior lecturer, Queensland University of Technology and Tobias R. Keller, Visiting Postdoc, Queensland University of Technology

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

Despite China’s denials, its treatment of the Uyghurs should be called what it is: cultural genocide

Uyghurs in Australia are pressing Canberra to take a firmer stance with China on its treatment of the Muslim minority. Thus far, Australia’s response has been relatively muted.
Tracey Nearmy/AAP

James Leibold, La Trobe University

As China grows more powerful and influential, our New Superpower series looks at what this means for the world – how China maintains its power, how it wields its power and how its power might be threatened. Read the rest of the series here.

---

In China’s far western region of Xinjiang, Chinese Communist Party officials are persecuting one of the worst human rights abuses of our time, what I labelled an act of cultural genocide in last week’s ABC Four Corners report.

Pressure is mounting on the Australian government to go beyond statements of concern and challenge China over its treatment of the Uyghur minority, particularly those Australian citizens and permanent residents being held in the vast network of “re-education camps” in Xinjiang.

Two Australian Uyghur men are meeting federal politicians in Canberra today to push for the government’s assistance in helping family members trapped in China.

Australia was one of 22 countries to sign a recent letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights expressing concern about the “arbitrary detention” of Uyghurs, but otherwise, its response has been muted.

In recent days, the Chinese government has defended its actions with a dubious propaganda report claiming that Uyghurs were historically forced to become Muslims and have been an integral part of China for thousands of years.

China repeatedly makes false and anachronistic claims like this about the ancient unity of the “Chinese people,” which includes ethnic minorities like the Uyghurs. Its aim is to project modern notions of sovereignty, nationhood and fixed borders back through history.

In reality, the 11 million or so Uyghurs are an indigenous Turkic-speaking people who have inhabited what they call “East Turkestan” for over a millennium. Along with the Tibetans, the Uyghurs have born the brunt of China’s settler colonial project, which seeks to assert its control over remote regions that are closer to Moscow and Tehran than Beijing.

Since March 2017, the Chinese government has interned over a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in massive, prison-like camps (including possibly 17 Australian residents), where they are subjected to coercive ideological remoulding.

Detainees are forced to denounce their religion, forbidden to speak their language, and taught how to adopt the norms of China’s Han ethnic majority, while praising President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party for salvation.

In their own words, party officials are “washing brains” and “cleansing hearts” in order to “cure” those bewitched by extremist thoughts. In Xinjiang today, non-Han thoughts and behaviour are pathologised as deviant and thus in need of urgent transformation.

What is genocide?

A litany of words and phrases have been used to describe this process. The Chinese government calls the camps free “vocational education and training centres” where Uyghurs willingly learn Chinese language and employment skills in order to assist with their “rehabilitation and reintegration”.

Scholars, journalists and rights defenders have spoken about cultural and religious “persecution” in Xinjiang, arguing the party-state’s policies amount to mass ethnic cleansing, cultural re-engineering, forced assimilation, brainwashing, or even ethnocide.

In August 2018, Gay McDougall, the vice chair of UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, referred to Xinjiang as a “no-rights zone”.

Yet, I believe the scale, sophistication and intent of China’s policies in Xinjiang merits a stronger description.

---

Read more:
The world has a hard time trusting China. But does it really care?

---

The term genocide was coined by lawyer Rafael Lemkin in 1944 in reaction to Nazi Germany’s coordinated strategy to annihilate the Jews, gypsies and other non-Aryan peoples. Four years later, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, with Australia one of the first counties to ratify it. The People’s Republic of China ratified it in 1983.

The convention defines genocide as

acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group

It also obligates signatories to punish those who engage in genocidal acts through a “competent” domestic or international penal tribunal.

Whether genocide includes only physical acts or can extend to attacks on cultural heritage has elicited intense debate, but for Lemkin, the term includes

drastic methods aimed at the rapid and complete disappearance of the culture, moral and religious life of a group of human beings.

Genocide also requires specific intent. In the words of political scientists Kenneth J. Campbell, genocide is a

premeditated, calculated, systematic, malicious crime authorised by the state’s political leaders.

This is exactly what Communist Party officials did when they authorised and then legalised the mass internment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in “concentrated transformation-through-education centres,” ripping more than 10% of the population away from their communities so they could be deliberately re-programmed.

Various methods for erasing culture

Yet, facts arguably matter more than words when it comes to China’s policies in Xinjiang.

We now have ample evidence (including internal party documents) of the deliberate efforts to destroy Uyghur culture and identity. Everyday actions like avoiding pork, speaking Uyghur, wearing a headscarf or praying quietly are now labelled “manifestations of religious extremism,” or what party officials call “malignant tumors” requiring urgent excising in a radical form of cultural surgery.

In the city of Kashgar, for example, a party document highlights the need to sever the lineages, roots and cultural connections of Uyghurs in order to eliminate the fountainhead of potential extremism.

German researcher Adrian Zenz has uncovered evidence of the party’s efforts to separate Uyghur children from their parents in state institutions, where they can be assimilated and indoctrinated by officials. In these institutions, cultural, religious, and linguistic knowledge is intentionally ruptured.

---

Read more:
Explainer: who are the Uyghurs and why is the Chinese government detaining them?

---

In some parts of Xinjiang, mosques and shrines are being bulldozed, while others are transformed into empty sites guarded by facial recognition cameras and imams on the party payroll.

In the name of strengthening “bilingual education”, Chinese is now the language of instruction across Xinjiang, from preschool to university. The use of Uyghur language, script, signs and pictures prohibited. Speaking Uyghur is now considered unpatriotic and can get one sent off for re-education.

Perhaps most disturbing, inter-ethnic marriages are being actively promoted to slowly breed out Uyghurness, with cash and other material inducements offered to Han men who take a Uyghur bride.

One can find numerous videos and messages promoting Han-Uyghur inter-marriage on Chinese social media, asserting Xinjiang is now safe and home to many beautiful and eligible Uyghur women who would appreciate a doting Han husband.

Finally, the Chinese government has intensified its family planning regime in Xinjiang to slow the growth of the Uyghur population and eliminate what party officials call “low quality births”.

Beginning in 2017, the region adopted a uniform two children policy that nullified preferential rules allowing rural Uyghur women to have additional births. In the past, Uyghur women were given 3,000 RMB (roughtly A$620) to forgo a third birth and agree to some sort of “long-term contraceptive measure.”

The Communist Party’s calculated war on Uyghur identity is quite literally tearing families and communities apart, while the rich tradition of diversity and tolerance in China is left in tatters.

The resilient nature of culture and memory means that attempts at genocide, thankfully, are rarely successful. Yet the pain they inflict is real.

James Leibold, Associate Professor of Politics and Asian Studies, La Trobe University

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

Australian Politics: 15 October 2013 – Denial Defiance

Australian Politics: 9 July 2013

A lot has changed over the last couple of weeks in Australian politics. Pressure on the coalition is beginning to increase as the election slowly draws closer and as the government under Kevin Rudd claws back much lost ground and re-election begins to look a more and more viable prospect. ALP reform is increasingly a vote winner for the government and the link below is to an article that takes a closer look at the proposed reforms.

For more visit:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/08/kevin-rudd-bolster-labor-pms

After applying months of intense scrutiny to Peter Slipper and Craig Thompson concerning various alleged rorts, Opposition leader Tony Abbott is now facing his own travel rorts scandal for wrongly claimed travel expenses. Will Tony Abbott now do what he expected to be done concerning those he criticised opposite him? Unlikely I’d say. The link below is to an article reporting on the matter.

For more visit:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/09/tony-abbott-refusal-travel-expenses

Also of current interest is the climate change denial policies of the Coalition under Tony Abbott and the link below is to an article that takes a look at that.

For more visit:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/southern-crossroads/2013/jul/08/tony-abbott-climate-policy-australia

On a lighter note (perhaps), the link below is to an article that takes a look at the ‘tie’ in Australian politics.

For more visit:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/09/tie-colour-kevin-rudd

Then there is the size of the senate election voting ballot form…

Nigeria: Boko Haram and Latest Persecution News

The link below is to an article reporting on the latest persecution news from Nigeria, including a denial by Boko Haram that they are interested in any form of ceasefire.

For more visit:
http://www.christiantelegraph.com/issue18837.html

Pakistani Muslims Beat Elderly Christian Couple Unconscious

80-year-old’s bones broken after he refused prostitute that four men offered.

SARGODHA, Pakistan, October 21 (CDN) — An 80-year-old Christian in southern Punjab Province said Muslims beat him and his 75-year-old wife, breaking his arms and legs and her skull, because he refused a prostitute they had offered him.

From his hospital bed in Vehari, Emmanuel Masih told Compass by telephone that two powerful Muslim land owners in the area, brothers Muhammad Malik Jutt and Muhammad Khaliq Jutt, accompanied by two other unidentified men, brought a prostitute to his house on Oct. 8. Targeting him as a Christian on the premise that he would not have the social status to fight back legally, the men ordered him to have sex with the woman at his residence in village 489-EB, he said.

“I turned down the order of the Muslim land owners, which provoked the ire of those four Muslim men,” Masih said in a frail voice. District Headquarters Hospital (DHQ) Vehari officials confirmed that he suffered broken hip, arm and leg bones in the subsequent attack.

His wife, Inayatan Bibi, said she was cleaning the courtyard of her home when she heard the four furious men brutally striking Masih in her house.

“I tried to intervene to stop them and pleaded for mercy, and they also thrashed me with clubs and small pieces of iron rods,” she said by telephone.

The couple was initially rushed to Tehsil Headquarters Hospital Burewala in critical condition, but doctors there turned them away at the behest of the Jutt brothers, according to the couple’s attorney, Rani Berkat. Burewala hospital officials confirmed the denial of medical care.

Taken to the hospital in Vehari, Inayatan Bibi was treated for a fractured skull. The beatings had left both her and her husband unconscious.

Berkat said the Muslim assailants initially intimidated Fateh Shah police into refraining from filing charges against them. After intervention by Berkat and Albert Patras, director of human rights group Social Environment Protection, police reluctantly registered a case against the Jutt brothers and two unidentified accomplices for attempted murder and “assisting to devise a crime.” The First Information Report (FIR) number is 281/10.

Station House Officer Mirza Muhammad Jamil of the Fateh Shah police station declined to speak with Compass about the case. Berkat said Jamil told her that the suspects would be apprehended and that justice would be served.

Berkat added, however, that police appeared to be taking little action on the case, and that therefore she had filed an application in the Vehari District and Sessions Court for a judge to direct Fateh Shah police to add charges of ransacking to the FIR.

Doctors at DHQ Vehari said the couple’s lives were no longer in danger, but that they would be kept under observation.

Report from Compass Direct News

Muslim Youths in Nigeria Destroy Church Buildings, Pastor’s Home

Attacks in Kano state said to stem from hostility by converts to Islam, land dispute.

LAGOS, Nigeria, May 21 (CDN) — Scores of Muslim youths on Wednesday (May 19) besieged church property in Kano state in northern Nigeria, destroying two church buildings and a pastor’s residence. 

One of the buildings and the pastor’s house were set ablaze on the premises of the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) at Kwasam, in the Kiru Local Government Area, while another building under construction was demolished. Youths reportedly numbering more than 100 in the predominantly Muslim area stormed the church grounds.

“The problem started when some Christian youths of ECWA church were converted to Islam,” the Rev. Lado Abdul, chairman of ECWA district in Kano, told Compass. “They swore that the ECWA church would not remain in the area, as they would do everything possible to chase Christians out from Kiru.”

The ECWA pastor whose house was demolished, Gambo Mato, has found shelter in another Christian’s home.

No life was lost during or after the incident as police and State Security Service officers intervened, and traditional rulers, religious leaders and government officials held an urgent meeting to quell potential skirmishes and establish security.

Abdul, however, lamented the denial of rights to Christians in Kano by area Muslims.

“Here in Kano, nobody gives you land to build a church,” he said. “The old churches built before now are being demolished for reasons no one can easily grasp. We have taken our complaint to Sarki Kano [traditional emir of Kano] Alhaji Ado Bayero, and he assured us that something would be done about it. We are looking to the state government to come to our rescue.”

Kano State Police Commissioner Mohammed Gana said that the attack on the church buildings grew out of a land dispute.

“The old church was a mud house, and the ECWA people wanted to rebuild it with blocks,” Gana said. “In the process, there was a disagreement, but we moved in to ensure peace and order.”

Four suspects have been arrested, and an investigation continues, the police chief said.

Elsewhere in Kano state, in Banaka of the Takai Local Government Area, a Baptist church was reportedly demolished on Saturday (May 15).

Kano state, one of 12 states in Nigeria where sharia (Islamic law) is in effect, has been the site of periodic Islamic aggression against the minority Christian community. Last year, when an Islamic extremist sect known as Boko Haram instigated rioting in Bauchi state that killed at least 12 Christians, the firestorm of violence spread to Kano state as well as Borno and Yobe states.

In 2008, hundreds of Muslims took to the streets of Kano city on April 20, attacking Christians and their shops and setting vehicles on fire based on claims that a Christian had blasphemed Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. Thousands of Christians were trapped in church buildings until police could disperse the assailants.

An unidentified Christian was said to have written an inscription on a shop wall that disparaged the prophet of Islam. Muslims at a market in the Sabon Garia area of the city reportedly attacked the Christian, whom police rescued and took to the area police station.

Muslims in large numbers soon trooped to the police station, threatening to set it ablaze unless officers released the Christian to be stoned to death in accordance with sharia, sources said.

Report from Compass Direct News 

Pakistani Muslim Prohibits Burial in Christian Graveyard

Land-grabber seizes cemetery, keeps mourners from burying body of young man.

GUJRANWALA, Pakistan, April 1 (CDN) — A Muslim land owner who effectively seized a Christian graveyard here refused to allow the burial of a young Christian at the site on Sunday (March 28).

Christians in Noshera Virkan, Gujranwala, have only one graveyard measuring little more than one acre. This longstanding disadvantage turned into a nightmare when Muhammad Boota, who owns much of the land in the area, prohibited Christians from burying the body of 25-year-old Riaz Masih there on Sunday (March 28).

Social worker Sajjad Masih told Compass that in the midst of the dispute, police from Saddar police station arrived and sided with Boota.

“You may burn your dead, but you cannot bury them in this graveyard,” Assistant Sub-Inspector (ASI) Asif Cheema told mourners while beating them and pushing them out of the graveyard, according to Masih.

The Christian mourners dispersed, and then went to the Station House Officer of the Saddar police station with their complaint. He did not pay heed to them, Masih said.

The death of a youth is always seen as a great tragedy in Pakistani culture, he said, making Boota’s denial especially callous. Masih said that when the Christian mourners saw no other option, he helped them organize a protest the next day; he and the crowd took the body to the office of the highest police officer in the city, the deputy inspector general (DIG) of Gujranwala. Mourners protested for two hours before the DIG on Monday (March 29), and police later accompanied them to the graveyard to allow the burial.

“We blocked a road and chanted slogans against the police and Muhammad Boota,” Masih said, “and after a few hours the DIG called us to his office. After listening, the DIG assured his support and referred the case to the relevant superintendent of the police, who told us that Boota would be arrested, and that he would also suspend ASI Asif Cheema.”

The SP said he would also order the arrest of anyone who kept Christians from burying their dead in the graveyard, Masih added.

None of the promises have been fulfilled. Khalid Gill, chief organizer in Punjab Province of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, said Boota has not been arrested, nor has ASI Cheema been suspended, as the superintendent of police had only promised those actions to appease the Christian community.

“It is a very common practice of government officials to settle down tensions with false promises that they never fulfill,” Gill said.

Gill told Compass that Boota had stationed armed men two weeks prior to the attempted burial to stop Christians from entering the graveyard. The graveyard has a long history as a Christian burial site, Gill said, but in 1997 Boota obtained one-fourth of it and then immediately filed a court case for full possession, bringing an interim stay order until the case is decided.

Pakistan civil cases often go on for decades, Gill said, and the case is still pending. He said that Boota turned part of the graveyard land that he obtained into a bus stop and used another part for his residence.

A local area source told Compass on the condition of anonymity that Boota enjoyed the backing of Member of Provincial Assembly Chaudhry Khalid Parvaiz Virk. He said that Virk was part of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), which is in power in Punjab Province.

“He was supporting the land grabbers, and the provincial government has taken no notice of it,” the source said.

Report from Compass Direct News