The calculus of death shows the COVID lock-down is clearly worth the cost

Neil Bailey, Monash University

Will the number of lives saved as a result of the COVID-19 restrictions be outweighed by the deaths from an economic recession?

This is a vital question to answer for governments responding to the current global tragedy.

Without numbers, there’s no obvious way of working out whether the economic impacts of the lock-down could be more harmful than the virus.

With health economics consultant Daniel West, I have attempted to estimate the numbers involved in Australia.

In order to provide a strong challenge to the status quo of lock-down the estimates we have used for increased deaths from a lockdown-induced recession are at the high end of the likely scale. The estimates we have used for deaths from COVID19 if the lockdown ends are at the low end.

Our analysis suggests that continuing strict restrictions in order to eradicate COVID-19 is likely to lead to eight times fewer total deaths than an immediate return to life as normal.

Lives the lock-down could cost

The most obvious deaths likely to follow from a lock-down-induced recession are suicides.

Studies in 26 European countries over four decades suggest that increases in unemployment of more than 3% are associated with increases in suicides by 4.45%.

A similar relationship was found in Australia during the global financial crisis.

The projections for increases in unemployment if the lock-down continues are grim, some pointing to an unemployment rate of up to 15% which might not return to normal for up to a decade.

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To account for the prospect that the coming recession will be more severe than most, we have used double the highest European estimate of the relationship between increased unemployment and suicide.

This estimate suggests that an increase in the unemployment rate to 15% followed by a gradual decline over ten years would produce a distressing 2,761 extra deaths due to suicide.

Loneliness takes lives too

Continued restrictions could also significantly increase loneliness, which, for those who are lonely, can increase deaths from all-causes by between 15% and 29%.

Research suggests that quarantine can increase the number of people showing psychological distress by about 20%, an estimate we have used as a proxy for the effect of loneliness, even though the lock-down restrictions are less severe than quarantine.

This points to an additional 4,015 deaths associated with loneliness from a lock-down of six months.

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Although it would be reasonable to assume that a recession would increase the number of deaths from other causes, studies show this isn’t the case. Research into “all-cause mortality” consistently shows declines in deaths during recessions, due in part to a reduced number of heart attacks.

The current lock-down might also increase deaths in specific ways, such as deaths from alcohol abuse.

On the other hand, if hospitals are overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases, deaths from non-COVID-19 injuries and illnesses will increase as people cannot access health care.

Because we have no data on these offsetting possibilities, we have assumed they are roughly matched in size.

It is also worth noting that although we assume lock-down restrictions will hurt our economy more severely, cities that implemented more severe restrictions during the 1918 Spanish flu had economies that bounced back faster after the pandemic.

Lives the lock-down might save

We have estimated the number of deaths from COVID-19, suicide and loneliness under three different scenarios

• an immediate return to life as normal, while still quarantining suspected cases

• an easing of restrictions that allows the virus to slowly spread in order to achieve so-called herd immunity

• the maintenance of restrictions until the virus is contained, followed by extensive tracking and tracing aimed at eliminating the virus

Scenario 1. Return to normal

With no lock-down measures other than the quarantine of suspected cases, the government believes 68% of people would contract the virus. Our estimates suggest this would result in more than 287,000 deaths from COVID-19 as the health system could not cope with the volume.

We assume this would produce a recession lasting five years instead of ten, with 10% initial unemployment and an associated 753 extra deaths from suicide.

Scenario 2. Herd immunity

The government says that to achieve herd immunity, about 60% of people would need to eventually contract the virus. If it is done slowly, intensive care units will not be overwhelmed, keeping the death rate per infection low.

Our estimates suggest the strategy would lead to 141,000 deaths from COVID-19.

We assume this would result in a deep recession of ten years with 15% initial unemployment and an associated 4,015 deaths from loneliness and 2,761 deaths from suicide.

Scenario 3. Eradication

Under the eradication scenario, 11.6% of people would be expected to contract the virus, resulting in 27,000 deaths from COVID-19.

As with the herd immunity strategy, we have assumed a deep recession over ten years with 15% initial unemployment and an associated 4,015 deaths from loneliness and 2,761 from suicide.

Note that given Australia’s current success, it is very possible that with continued prudent restrictions, the number of deaths due to COVID19 will be well below 27,000.

The calculus of death

Regardless of the strategy, the estimated number of deaths from COVID-19 far exceeds the estimated number of deaths from suicide and loneliness.

Despite assuming that an immediate return to life as normal would prevent all further deaths from loneliness and 70% of deaths from the increased suicide rate associated with high unemployment, the life as normal scenario is predicted to result in by far the highest overall number of deaths: 288,000.

This is almost twice the number of deaths predicted for the herd immunity scenario (148,000) and more than eight times as many as eradication (34,000).

The Brain and Mind Centre at the University of Sydney has reported larger estimates for suicides from increased unemployment: an extra 750 to 1,500 suicides per year for five years. The top end of this range projects an extra 7,500 suicides, almost three times our estimate.

Even using this higher estimate, the number of lives that would be lost from COVID-19 without lock-down measures would dwarf the number of extra suicides.

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People are understandably concerned about what the lock-down will do to their jobs, businesses and investments. That damage extends beyond lives lost.

The lives that will be lost are important. The implementation of preventative measures will be vital to reduce the risk of suicide.

Yet our calculations clearly suggest that, when it comes to human lives, far fewer will be lost by continuing restrictions than would be lost by ending them now.

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If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

This article was produced in collaboration with Daniel West. An extended version can be found here.

Neil Bailey, Research Fellow at the Epworth Centre for Innovation in Mental Health, Monash University

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

Friday essay: the uncanny melancholy of empty photographs in the time of coronavirus

Cherine Fahd, University of Technology Sydney and Sara Oscar, University of Technology Sydney

Over the last few weeks, photographs in the news and on social media have documented our behaviour in response to COVID-19.

Panic buying of pasta, rice and, surprisingly, toilet paper is represented in empty shelf after empty shelf.

That’s not all that is empty.

Images of empty public spaces – from the streets of Ginza, to soccer stadiums, to the Venice canals, to lone masked travellers on buses, trains and trams – evoke a sense of apocalyptic films and the end of days.

Photographs of empty public spaces are increasingly filling our news feeds, documenting our response to a worldwide pandemic.

While these pictures point to a frightening situation, we can’t help being drawn into the otherworldly and unfamiliar scenes. They make us stop, look and linger as we try to comprehend what these places without people are saying.

Our attraction to images of the world without us reveals a collective fascination for the apocalypse or, perhaps, extinction.

Take the Instagram feed Beautiful Abandoned Places and its 1.2 million followers. These photographs show buildings in ruins or overgrown with weeds; old tourist sites now empty.

The images are “ruin porn”: when we take voyeuristic pleasure or delight in the sight of architectural decay or dilapidation.

The appeal comes from looking at a scene that could cause discomfort (or estrangement, or isolation) but doesn’t. The viewer is looking at a representation of the scene, not the scene itself, from a position of far-off comfort.

But another definition of ruin porn, a moral definition, is gaining pleasure from someone else’s failure, as seen through these architectural ruins.

Morally compromised as outsiders, we aestheticise a picture of another’s decline while looking away from factors that contribute to crisis.

The images in our current news feeds – despite what they say about coronavirus – offer similarly compelling visuals. We take delight in the formal composition of these images, which fall into tropes of the photographic picturesque.

The absence of people provides us with the ability to see into the distance with endless visual perspective. We feel as though we are alone in the landscape, a heroic adventurer.

Why is our absence from the world so fascinating to view in photographs?

In the early era of photography, anything moving would be rendered invisible, while architecture (or a corpse) was the perfect still subject. Take for instance Daguerre’s 1839 photograph of the Boulevard du Temple, Paris, a bustling city street.

Louis Daguerre’s Boulevard du Temple, photographed in 1839.

In this photograph, the street appears empty – with the exception of two figures who have stood still long enough to be captured by the exposure time required to portray the scene.

Photographs have always provided us with an alternative view of the world without us.

Contemporary fine art photographer Candida Höfer has made a successful career out of photographing large-scale empty spaces like public libraries, museums, theatres and cathedrals. Thomas Struth’s empty street photographs make German cities look like ghost towns.

These artists demonstrate a longstanding fascination with photographing architecture devoid of human subjects.

This fascination may be due to what architectural historian Anthony Vidler described as “the architectural uncanny”. Abandoned and deserted spaces, he said, make our familiar spaces become unfamiliar.

For Vidler, this estrangement from space hinges on visual representation such as in photography.

These photographs of empty public spaces capture a departure from our everyday and instead visualise this uncanniness: an alternative reality emptied of our presence.

The uncanny, wrote Vidler:

Would be sinister, disturbing, suspect, strange; it would be characterised better as “dread” than terror, deriving its force from its very inexplicability, its sense of lurking unease, rather than from any clearly defined source of fear – an uncomfortable sense of haunting rather than a present apparition.

While we hide away and quarantine ourselves indoors, the world outside is captured in the collective imaginary as eerily without us. What we thought we knew of public spaces is instead evoking the sensation of being alone in a haunted house.

In images where we expect to see hundreds or thousands of people, we find instead a few lonely figures presented to us by a single observer: the camera.

Pictorial urban life emptied of its citizens produces an assortment of emotional responses: estrangement, social alienation, melancholy.

The Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico captured this in his 1913 painting Melancholy of a Beautiful Day where an ominous figure stands alone in an empty town street accompanied only by his shadow and a Roman statue in the distance.

Made over a century ago, de Chirico’s painting surprisingly resonates with the photographs we are seeing in the news today. While it offers a historical example of the surrealist fascination with psychological dream states, it is also prescient of our current reality.

The images being captured by news photographers point to our fear of the pandemic and, fundamentally, of each other.

The photographs expose how swiftly we can become estranged from our everyday lives, how our surroundings can suddenly become something other – something fragile and tenuous.

The empty shelves, the empty restaurants, the grounded planes, the empty airports, the depopulated Mecca without worshippers, Trafalgar Square without tourists: these are all signals of the slowing of progress.

Photography is so good at capturing this because it is an unmediated mechanical eye that confronts our all-too-human eye. In these instances, the camera is able to be where we cannot be.

The mechanical eye is further exaggerated in the photographs which provide us with a distinctly nonhuman view of open, empty spaces.

Drone images give us an aerial perspective not readily available to the human eye. When viewed in the context of a global health crisis, there is no mistaking that we are – somewhat strangely – bearing witness to our own erasure.

We are accustomed to seeing images of crisis represented by fires, floods, bombs, warfare. The photographs we see as a result of COVID-19 are an emptying out and a slowing down.

This is a different sort of crisis, one that is mirrored in the uncertainty and slowing down of our financial markets and the need for government stimulus packages.

As cultural historian, Frederic Jameson said:

it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.

Perhaps this is precisely what these photographs are showing us: how the pandemic paradigm of “social distancing”, which isolates us physically from each other, disrupts and stops our lifestyles.

The pausing or end of our gathering in public, in airports and hotels, at tourist sites and sporting matches, in shopping malls, museums and bars, signals a rupture to the flow of everyday life.

Photographs of empty public spaces unmask the illusion that we are integral to existence. Even without a camera operator, optical technology will linger on and capture scenes of the world without presence.

Who can say whether that operator is human, or nonhuman, like a satellite from outer space that is still programmed to picture our buildings even if we aren’t in them?

Cherine Fahd, Director Photography, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney and Sara Oscar, Lecturer in Photography, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney

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

Australia: Bushfire Crisis

What we know suggests the economic impact of Wuhan coronavirus will be limited

Mark Humphery-Jenner, UNSW

The Wuhan coronavirus has had a significant human toll. More than 100 people have died and nearly 3,000 are known to be infected, including some in Australia. The number actually infected will be higher. People experiencing only mild symptoms often don’t report them.

The economic cost is as hard to tease out as the health cost, but there are clues.

They suggest the coronavirus will have little impact on the global economy, quite a bit in China, and some in Australia, which will most likely be short-lived.

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Confirmed cases of Wuhan coronavirus

Data included until January 27th 2019.
The Conversation

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China is bearing the immediate brunt

The impact in China is already apparent, with 35 million people under effective lockdown, air travel curtailed, and some tourist destinations closed. In a sign the virus might spread, five million people reportedly left Wuhan before the lockdown.

The Shenzhen and Shanghai composite stock market indexes fell 3.52% and 2.75% before they closed for what turned out to be an extended Lunar New Year break.

While China’s steps to contain the coronavirus will hurt its economy in the short term, in longer term they might contain the damage.

Previous pandemics suggest scale

The world has changed significantly since the the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, the Asian Flu pandemic of 1957-58 and even the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) pandemic of 2002-04.

On one hand the world has become better at containment and treatment; on the other, it has become more connected. But previous pandemics can tell us a lot.

Emergency hospital during 1918 epidemic, Camp Funston, Kansas.
Otis Archives, National Museum of Health and Medicine

1918 Spanish Flu: According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Spanish Flu hit 500 million people worldwide, killing as many as 50 million worldwide, including 675,000 in the United States.

The US Congressional Budget Office believes such an event in 2006 would have cut US gross domestic product 4.25% below where it would have been.

World Bank calculations suggest a severe pandemic, killing 71 million people, would cut world GDP by about 5%.

1957-58 Asian Flu Pandemic: The 1957-58 pandemic killed about 1.1 million people worldwide. A follow-up 1968 pandemic had a similar effect.

The Congressional Budget Office believes a recurrence would cut United States GDP to about 1% below where it would have been. Similar countries would be affected in a similar way. The World Bank believes such a scenario would cut world GDP by between 1% and 2%.

2002-04 SARS pandemic: According to the US CDC, SARS infected around 8,100 people, with 774 dying, which was a 9.4% mortality rate. Its economic impact is open to debate. SARS mainly affected mainland China and Hong Kong, with one study estimating it cut their GDPs by 1.1% and 2.6%.

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But because the event coincided with the recovery from a global recession, the effect is hard to estimate. Other estimates are less pessimistic.

The economic impact was limited, with little impact outside of China and Hong Kong, as Australia’s Treasury noted at the time.

This one should be smaller

Here’s what we know.

• It’s not yet severe. Fewer than 100 people have died so far. The mortality rate is just under 3%. China has moved aggressively to contain the virus meaning it should have have less impact on gross domestic product than earlier pandemics.

• There’s been minimal global impact. There have been few cases outside China. The countries with few if any reported cases are likely to suffer little impact, as correctly predicted by a Treasury discussion paper on the impact of SARS.

• China and Hong Kong are the worst hit. The impact is likely be less than SARS because the coronavirus is less severe, because of China’s forthright containment efforts and because the outbreak has coincided with the Lunar New Year break. However, the aggressive steps taken to contain the virus might have a significant short term impact. Travel has declined significantly. Tourist attractions, such as Disneyland in China have closed. Wuhan is likely to see a significant economic decline.

• The impact should be short-lived. With SARS, the economies of both China and the rest of the world rebounded shortly afterwards. To some extent, this coincided with the world emerging from an economic downturn. But other estimates suggest that even the impact of the severe 1918 pandemic was short-lived.

• Different industries will be impacted differently. In impacted regions, tourism and consumer spending are likely to be the most significantly hit, as was the case in 1918. China has already suffered a significant reduction in travel expenditure. Other industries, including medical industries, will experience positive impacts. But given that the coronavirus is relatively contained, the impact is unlikely to spread those industries in other countries.

Taken together these points suggest the coronavirus is unlikely to significantly affect the world economy.

Based on what we know so far, the impact on China is likely to be short-lived.

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The flow-on effect to countries with a relationship with China such as Australia is likely to modest and and also short-lived.

Should infection or mortality rates spike, the impact could worsen.

Mark Humphery-Jenner, Associate Professor of Finance, UNSW

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

Take care when examining the economic impact of fires. GDP doesn’t tell the full story

It is possible to calculate the impact impact of fires, but not using GDP.
Shutterstock/Andrew Brownbilll/AAP

Janine Dixon, Victoria University

Estimates of the economic damage caused by the bushfires are rolling in, some of them big and some unprecedented, as is the scale of the fires themselves.

These types of estimates will be refined and used to make – or break – the case for programs to limit the impact of similar disasters in the future. Some will be used to make a case for – or against – action on climate change.

But it’s important they not be done using the conventional measure of gross domestic product (GDP).

GDP measures everything produced in any given period.

It is a good enough measure of material welfare when used to measure the impact of a tourist event or a new mine or factory or something like the national broadband network, but it can be misleading – sometimes grossly misleading – when used to measure the economic impact of a catastrophe or natural disaster.

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That’s because it measures the positives brought about the recovery from disasters but leaves out some of the negatives caused by the destruction.

For example:

• building a new house has a positive impact on GDP, even if the old house was burnt down

• a military evacuation has a positive impact on GDP, even though the circumstances that make it necessary are life-threatening and traumatic

• bushfires stimulate GDP by creating more demand for health services, even as the victims suffer from smoke inhalation, burns or post-traumatic stress disorder.

It is possible to get at the full story

Economic modelling pioneered in Australia, and used to estimate the impact of terrorism and epidemics makes it possible to prepare measures of welfare that take account of the costs of disasters.

Among the immediate costs in the first months after a bushfire disaster would be:

• the direct cost of fire-fighting

• the cost of temporarily relocating residents

• health costs, such as treatment of burns and respiratory illnesses

• loss of work days associated with firefighting, injuries, illnesses, displacement and loss of life

• a downgrading of consumer confidence

• destruction of assets including homes, farms, businesses and natural resources and the associated disruption of economic activity including tourism, agriculture and housing

• the cost of replacing or rebuilding these assets

Longer term impacts would derive from:

• health problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder leading to negative impacts on quality of life and labour supply

• long term damage to ecosystems, including contamination of water, and extinction or severe loss of animal species including those necessary to agricultural production, such as bees

• reputational damage leading to possible permanent downgrading of tourism activity in affected regions and in Australia more broadly

• potential ongoing reluctance to invest in Australia

• potential increases in cost of living in bushfire prone regions due to increases in insurance costs.

It involves going beyond GDP

The longer term impacts of disasters on a nation’s GDP are clearly negative, deriving from a decline in productive capacity (labour, capital and natural resources) which unambiguously detracts from economic welfare.

In the immediate aftermath, expenditure on reconstruction of homes and other assets can add to GDP, but the funding of these activities (whether direct or through insurance) adds to debt and can drag on household consumption, either immediately or in the future. A related measure, Gross National Income (GNI) takes this into account and is generally a better measure of economic welfare.

Bushfire-induced health expenditure stimulates both GDP and GNI but detracts from welfare.

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Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, for example, can hardly be considered an improvement in standard of living.

To offset this inappropriate “good news”, it is possible to construct an index of leisure-adjusted GNI which takes into account the downgraded quality of leisure time.

As a starting point for such estimates, the prime minister’s department sets the statistical value of a year of life free of injury, disease and disability at A$182,000 (2014 dollars).

And it depends on where you are

Aggregated measures like GDP, GNI and leisure-adjusted GNI do not show the distribution of economic impact.

An event that strips a small amount from the incomes of everybody is different from one that decimates just a few regions, yet looks the same in a nationwide measure, so it is important that any economic analysis also looks at regional impacts.

The work is yet to be done, but it is safe to say that the conventional link between GDP and economic welfare (“more is better”) breaks down when assessing tragedies, particularly ones with profound regional impacts.

When campaigning to be US president Bobby Kennedy (John F Kennedy’s brother) said that GDP measures “everything… except that which makes life worthwhile”.

It’d be wise to bear that in mind when considering the policy response to the bushfires.

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Janine Dixon, Economist at Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University

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

Government crackdown on missionary presence could get worse

The Kazakh government continues to put pressure on foreign missionaries attempting to obtain visas to stay in the country. The Kazakh church is prepared for matters to get worse, reports MNN.

"Foreign involvement for the purpose of missionary work in Kazakhstan becomes increasingly difficult to happen," confirms Eric Mock, vice president of Ministry Operations for Slavic Gospel Association.

Norwegian news network Forum 18 conveys a number of instances in which the Kazakh government has denied visas to foreign missionaries of various minority faiths. A missionary visa, as it is, lasts only 180 days and cannot be renewed.

Mock says there is some fear that the visas will become even more restrictive. According to Forum 18, the Nur Otan Party has even created a document calling for further crackdown on "non-traditional faiths." Forum 18 quotes a report as saying, "The Nur Otan Party should devote special attention to the activity of non-traditional religious movements of destructive character. The destructive impact of such movements is very great."

With clear contempt toward the presence of evangelical Christian missionaries as well as missionaries for other minority faiths, the church as well as ministries like SGA need to prepare for any change. "[We need to] be sure that we do not assume that the world that we minister in today is the same that we minister in tomorrow," says Mock.

Whether or not missionary presence is increasingly restricted does not directly affect SGA, since their ministry mainly focuses on helping nationals. Still, won’t a crackdown harm the church? Mock says not as much as you might think.

"There is one thing that I saw [in Kazakhstan] that mostly encouraged my heart," explains Mock. "I saw a group of ethnic Kazakh young men who God has raised up with a passion to reach their own people. I had not really seen that in the past; it [had been] more of a Russian Baptist influence, but now I’m seeing Kazakh Baptist."

As long as changes don’t happen too abruptly, Mock says he believes the church will be able to handle any blows headed their way. The energy generated by young church leaders could be just what the Kazakh church needs to become self-sustaining. "With this new generation coming up, I think even with law changes, God has raised up this younger generation to make a profound impact for the sake of the Gospel."

If laws are passed too quickly or even just gradually, their effects will still of course be evident in the church. Mock says the best thing that we can do for them now is to pray. "There is nothing more important than praying for the believers in Kazakhstan to be passionate in reaching their own people, and to see more churches planted with that same commitment to advance the Gospel."

Report from the Christian Telegraph

Australia Election 2010 – Government to be Decided Tomorrow???

It would seem that the next Australian government will be decided tomorrow. The three independents yet to decide who they will support and effectively put in power are tipped to make their decision tomorrow. It has now been more than two weeks since the election and the Australian people have had enough of the indecision that is currently Australian politics. Most think tomorrow will be decision day – we all certainly hope so.

New England MP Tony Windsor is at home this weekend thinking over his decision and I would expect him to put his support behind the ALP. Lyne MP Rob Oakeshott also seems to be leaning towards the ALP. Kennedy MP Bob Katter may also support the ALP – but he is still an unknown in my opinion.

The ALP has certainly been more forthcoming in the wishes of the independents, seemingly more willing to compromise with the independents and reach a consensus. The ALP broadband policy is more appealing and seems to have the support of the independents at this stage. The so-called hole in the Coalition financial figures has also had an impact on the independents and would have them leaning towards the ALP I think. The hole is as large as 11 billion Australian dollars and seen to be a significant problem for the Coalition. That there have been more meetings with the ALP than the Coalition would also seem to indicate that the independents are leaning towards Labor. The ALP has also signed on to the parliamentary reforms sought by the independents, while the Coalition is yet to do so.

Either way, it would appear that a decsion may be made tomorrow or in the next few days at most.

Motive for Aid Worker Killings in Afghanistan Still Uncertain

Taliban takes responsibility, but medical organization unsure of killers’ identity.

ISTANBUL, August 12 (CDN) — The killing of a team of eye medics, including eight Christian aid workers, in a remote area of Afghanistan last week was likely the work of opportunistic gunmen whose motives are not yet clear, the head of the medical organization said today.

On Friday (Aug. 6), 10 medical workers were found shot dead next to their bullet-ridden Land Rovers. The team of two Afghan helpers and eight Christian foreigners worked for the International Assistance Mission (IAM). They were on their way back to Kabul after having provided medical care to Afghans in one of the country’s remotest areas.

Afghan authorities have not been conclusive about who is responsible for the deaths nor the motivation behind the killings. In initial statements last week the commissioner of Badakhshan, where the killings took place, said it was an act of robbers. In the following days, the Taliban took responsibility for the deaths.

The Associated Press reported that a Taliban spokesman said they had killed them because they were spies and “preaching Christianity.” Another Taliban statement claimed that they were carrying Dari-language Bibles, according to the news agency. Initially the attack was reported as a robbery, which IAM Executive Director Dirk Frans said was not true.

“There are all these conflicting reports, and basically our conclusion is that none of them are true,” Frans told Compass. “This was an opportunistic attack where fighters had been displaced from a neighboring district, and they just happened to know about the team. I think this was an opportunistic chance for them to get some attention.”

A new wave of tribal insurgents seeking territory, mineral wealth and smuggling routes has arisen that, taken together, far outnumber Taliban rebels, according to recent U.S. intelligence reports.

Frans added that he is expecting more clarity as authorities continue their investigations.

He has denied the allegation that the members of their medical team were proselytizing.

“IAM is a Christian organization – we have never hidden this,” Frans told journalists in Kabul on Monday (Aug. 9). “Indeed, we are registered as such with the Afghan government. Our faith motivates and inspires us – but we do not proselytize. We abide by the laws of Afghanistan.”

IAM has been registered as a non-profit Christian organization in Afghanistan since 1966.

Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, a former political candidate, dismissed the Taliban’s claims that team members were proselytizing or spying, according to the BBC.

“These were dedicated people,” Abdullah said according to the BBC report. “Tom Little used to work in Afghanistan with his heart – he dedicated half of his life to service the people of Afghanistan.”

Abdullah had trained as an eye surgeon under Tom Little, 62, an optometrist who led the team that was killed last week. Little and his family had lived in Afghanistan for more than 30 years with IAM providing eye care.

IAM has provided eye care and medical help in Afghanistan since 1966. In the last 44 years, Frans estimates they have provided eye care to more than 5 million Afghans.

Frans said he doesn’t think that Christian aid workers are particularly targeted, since every day there are many Afghan casualties, and the insurgents themselves realize they need the relief efforts.

“We feel that large parts of the population are very much in favor of what we do,” he said. “The people I met were shocked [by the murders]; they knew the members of the eye care team, and they were shocked that selfless individuals who are going out of their way to actually help the Afghan people … they are devastated.”

The team had set up a temporary medical and eye-treatment camp in the area of Nuristan for two and a half weeks, despite heavy rains and flooding affecting the area that borders with Pakistan.

Nuristan communities had invited the IAM medical team. Afghans of the area travelled from the surrounding areas to receive treatment in the pouring rain, said Little’s wife in a CNN interview earlier this week, as she recalled a conversation with her husband days before he was shot.

Little called his wife twice a day and told her that even though it was pouring “sheets of rain,” hundreds of drenched people were gathering from the surrounding areas desperate to get medical treatment.

 

The Long Path Home

The team left Nuristan following a difficult path north into Badakhshan that was considered safer than others for reaching Kabul. Frans said the trek took two days in harsh weather, and the team had to cross a mountain range that was 5,000 meters high.

“South of Nuristan there is a road that leads into the valley where we had been asked to come and treat the eye patients, and a very easy route would have been through the city of Jalalabad and then up north to Parun, where we had planned the eye camp,” Frans told Compass. “However, that area of Nuristan is very unsafe.”

When the team ended their trek and boarded their vehicles, the armed group attacked them and killed all but one Afghan member of the team. Authorities and IAM believe the team members were killed between Aug. 4 and 5. Frans said he last spoke with Little on Aug. 4.

IAM plans eye camps in remote areas every two years due to the difficulty of preparing for the work and putting a team together that is qualified and can endure the harsh travel conditions, he said.

“We have actually lost our capacity to do camps like this in remote areas because we lost two of our veteran people as well as others we were training to take over these kinds of trips,” Frans said.

The team of experts who lost their lives was composed of two Afghan Muslims, Mahram Ali and another identified only as Jawed; British citizen Karen Woo, German Daniela Beyer, and U.S. citizens Little, Cheryl Beckett, Brian Carderelli, Tom Grams, Glenn Lapp and Dan Terry.

“I know that the foreign workers of IAM were all committed Christians, and they felt this was the place where they needed to live out their life in practice by working with and for people who have very little access to anything we would call normal facilities,” said Frans. “The others were motivated by humanitarian motives. All of them in fact were one way or another committed to the Afghan people.”

The two Afghans were buried earlier this week. Little and Terry, who both had lived in the war-torn country for decades, will be buried in Afghanistan.

Despite the brutal murders, Frans said that as long as the Afghans and their government continue to welcome them, IAM will stay.

“We are here for the people, and as long as they want us to be here and the government in power gives us the opportunity to work here, we are their guests and we’ll stay, God willing,” he said.

 

Memorial

On Sunday (Aug. 8), at his home church in Loudonville, New York, Dr. Tom Hale, a medical relief worker himself, praised the courage and sacrifice of the eight Christians who dedicated their lives to helping Afghans.

“Though this loss has been enormous, I want to state my conviction that this loss is not senseless; it is not a waste,” said Hale. “Remember this: those eight martyrs in Afghanistan did not lose their lives, they gave up their lives.”

Days before the team was found dead, Little’s wife wrote about their family’s motivation to stay in Afghanistan through “miserable” times. Libby Little described how in the 1970s during a citizens’ uprising they chose not to take shelter with other foreigners but to remain in their neighborhood.

“As the fighting worsened and streets were abandoned, our neighbors fed us fresh bread and sweet milk,” she wrote. “Some took turns guarding our gate, motioning angry mobs to ‘pass by’ our home. When the fighting ended, they referred to us as ‘the people who stayed.’

“May the fruitful door of opportunity to embrace suffering in service, or at least embrace those who are suffering, remain open for the sake of God’s kingdom,” she concluded.

 

Concern for Afghan Christians

Afghanistan’s population is estimated at 28 million. Among them are very few Christians. Afghan converts are not accepted by the predominantly Muslim society. In recent months experts have expressed concern over political threats against local Christians.

At the end of May, private Afghan TV station Noorin showed images of Afghan Christians being baptized and praying. Within days the subject of Afghans leaving Islam for Christianity became national news and ignited a heated debate in the Parliament and Senate. The government conducted formal investigations into activities of Christian aid agencies. In June IAM successfully passed an inspection by the Afghan Ministry of Economy.

In early June the deputy secretary of the Afghan Parliament, Abdul Sattar Khawasi, called for the execution of converts, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“Those Afghans that appeared on this video film should be executed in public,” he said, according to the AFP. “The house should order the attorney general and the NDS (intelligence agency) to arrest these Afghans and execute them.”

Small protests against Christians ensued in Kabul and other towns, and two foreign aid groups were accused of proselytizing and their activities were suspended, news sources reported.

A source working with the Afghan church who requested anonymity said she was concerned that the murders of IAM workers last week might negatively affect Afghan Christians and Christian aid workers.

“The deaths have the potential to shake the local and foreign Christians and deeply intimidate them even further,” said the source. “Let’s pray that it will be an impact that strengthens the church there but that might take awhile.”

Report from Compass Direct News

Evangelical Christians at risk from Russian government

Evangelical Christians may be at risk in Russia as Orthodoxy gains more and more governmental favor, reports MNN.

The Liberty of Conscience Institute recently discovered that the Russian government is cozying up to the Russian Orthodox Church in ways that may inhibit religious freedoms. Joel Griffith of Slavic Gospel Association says there is reason to be concerned.

"Russia’s president [has] taken the initiative to permanently assign orthodox priest army units, and they’re also wanting to introduce religious education classes at state schools."

The more power the Orthodox Church gains, the more risk there will be to the religious freedoms of all minority religions, no less evangelical Christianity. Griffith says history proves that evangelical Christians may well be targeted if such legislation is passed. A sizeable evangelical movement would well be viewed as an encroachment on Orthodox territory, and would consequently not be taken lightly.

If this is the case, evangelical movement could be very much hindered in Russia. As it now stands, some evangelical churches experience virtually no opposition at all from the government, while others experience a great deal. If a national legislation should pass, opposition will likely extend to every evangelical church.

"If this becomes a policy of the national government to freeze out evangelicals, obviously that’s going to have a pretty big impact not only on freedom of worship," cautions Griffith, "but also on the proclamation of the Gospel."

Fortunately, in order for any such government-orthodox partnership to be enforced via the military and education, it would have to pass through a significant number of hoops. As it stands, this sort of breach on the separation of church and state goes directly against the Russian constitution, not to mention Western ideals.

"The West is concerned with human rights and the freedom of conscience and the freedom of worship," notes Griffith. "And officially under the constitution, there’s supposed to be freedom of religion and freedom of worship in Russia. So any moves to do this certainly fly in the face of what the Russian constitution would say."

Unfortunately, many Russians consider Orthodoxy as a given. Historically, the Orthodox Church has, more often than not, been considered an arm of the Russian government. Pray that the obvious infringement of government policy on the basis of the constitution would be enough to stop Orthodox alliances with the Russian government from being nationally enforced.

Slavic Gospel Association helps equip churches in Russia with training and materials to prepare them for every situation as evangelicals.

Report from the Christian Telegraph 

Deadline for re-registration passes; churches face illegal status

Oppressive new laws in Azerbaijan and Tajikistan required religious communities to re-register with the government by January 1, 2010 or face illegal status. As of December 16, only about 100 of Azerbaijan’s 534 religious communities had been able to do so. Fewer than half of Tajikistan’s religious communities re-registered, reports MNN.

According to Joel Griffith of Slavic Gospel Association, officials place obstructions in the paths of churches trying to re-register.

"They will find some technicality or basically any reason to deny registration. So even if some of the groups actually follow the law to the letter and meet the requirements, it just seems very arbitrary and capricious as to whether the officials will agree to register to not," he explained.

It’s unclear how strictly the governments of the two nations will enforce their laws.

"In the worst case scenario…they could basically close congregations down and impose pretty stiff penalties," Griffith said. "In the best case scenario…unless they agree to fully repeal these statues or amend these laws, I think we need to just hope and pray that even though they’re on the books, these things won’t be enforced."

That’s often the case in countries that have similar laws. The new laws include other burdensome requirements in addition to the re-registration mandate. Azerbaijan’s law requires religious communities to provide more information for registration and to obtain approval to build or rebuild places of worship. It also prohibits the sale of religious literature in unapproved locations and religious activity outside registered addresses.

Tajikistan’s religion law censors religious literature, bans state officials from founding religious communities, requires state approval to invite foreigners for religious visits or to travel abroad for religious events, and restricts children’s religious activity and education.

Christians in Azerbaijan are especially concerned about how courts might interpret unclear provisions in the law. They fear a loose interpretation could penalize "peaceful religious activity." Griffith quoted a passage from the law and explained the issue.

"‘The community formulates its relations with other religious confessions on the basis of religious toleration (tolerance), respect and the avoidance of conflict,’ and the community cannot use violence or the threat of violence in proclaiming its faith. Well, if you don’t define those terms, such as ‘respect and the avoidance of conflict’…you could almost say that Christian evangelism could even be illegal under a formulation like that."

Since Christians believe in only one means of salvation — Jesus Christ — it would be entirely possible for disagreement with other religious groups to be interpreted as "conflict." However, Christians are not the only people worried about the potential impact of the law.

"It’s not just Christians that are concerned; we’ve got Muslim groups that are concerned. These are largely Muslim nations," Griffith said. "I think there are a number of people that are concerned about what this will possibly do down the road."

No matter what does happen, the Christian church will remain committed to the Gospel.

"Regardless of what happens in these countries, the churches still have their marching orders from the Lord: to proclaim the Gospel," Griffith said. "And no matter what man does, they’re going to continue to proclaim the Gospel."

Christians in Tajikistan and Azerbaijan need the prayers and support of their fellow believers. SGA has been supporting churches in the former Soviet Union for 75 years, and it continues to support churches in these two countries.

"It’s important to help them take advantage of every open door they can find to share the Gospel," Griffith said. "It might be through supporting a church-planting missionary; it might be through providing Russian-language Bibles and literature; it may be through helping to support in-country training, and sometimes that training has to take place quietly…. But for churches here in the West that have the resources, it’s important to support our brothers and sisters there who don’t have the resources that we do."

Report from the Christian Telegraph