I’m not one for dwelling on questions of this nature – the ‘what if’ type of questions that is. Simply can’t happen or isn’t going to happen so why bother with it. However, I’ll humor my readers on this occasion with a simple answer – my shoulders. Since my car accident they give me a bit of pain and discomfort on a daily basis.
She charges Muslim doctors threw her from hospital window after gang-rape.
KARACHI, Pakistan, July 26 (CDN) — A Catholic nurse trainee has regained consciousness after a Muslim doctor allegedly raped her and threw her from a hospital’s fourth-floor window this month.
The student nurse told media and rights groups that on July 13 several Muslim men, led by Dr. Abdul Jabbar Meammon, beat and raped her, and then threw her from the window of Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center (JPMC) to keep her from revealing the abuse.
Meammon, who had taken over a room in the all-female wing of the hospital, has a history of abusing Christian nurses, a hospital administrator said. Dr. Seemi Jamali, chief of JPMC’s Emergency Department, told Compass that Meammon had been suspended from the hospital seven times for drinking alcohol on the job and other misbehavior, and that he was drunk when he assaulted Ashraf.
A medico-legal officer at the hospital who carried out autopsies, Meammon was forcibly occupying a room in the women-only wing of the doctors’ hostel, Jamali said. She added that Meammon is an influential figure backed by a leading political party in Karachi.
The third-year student nurse, Magdalene Ashraf, was unconscious for 56 hours as surgeons fought for her life at the intensive care unit of JPMC and is still in critical condition. On July 19 she gave a statement to police that has not been released. Later that day she spoke to media and a lawyer from the Christian Lawyers’ Foundation (CLF), saying several men took hold of her at 4:30 p.m. on July 13, and after abusing her for several hours threw her from the window.
Ashraf said that fellow nurse Sajjad Fatima tricked her into going into Meammon’s room by telling Ashraf that he wanted to talk with her about a grade on a class assignment. When she arrived, she told media and the CLF, another doctor and Meammon’s driver were also present, and that Meammon grabbed her.
“When I resisted and tried to escape, nurse Fatima slapped both my cheeks and pushed me into Dr. Jabbar,” Ashraf said. “I cried out but no one arrived there to rescue me. They not only gang-raped me, they also tortured me physically and ruthlessly beat me.”
She dismissed claims by Meammon that she jumped out the window.
“If I had jumped myself, my legs would have been fractured, and I would not have had injuries to my head, brain and shoulders,” she said.
Khalid Gill, head of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance in Punjab Province, told Compass that Meammon had a history of sexually harassing female Christian students at the teaching hospital.
Gill and the Rev. Azher Kaleem, general secretary of the Christian Lawyers’ Foundation (CLF), said that after Ashraf was thrown out the window, Meammon also jumped down in order to portray himself as innocent, claiming people trying to harm him were pursuing him as well. His hip injury from the jump was treated at the better-equipped Agha Khan Hospital, where he was hand-cuffed and his feet shackled before being transferred to a holding cell to face charges.
The Rev. Khadim Bhutto of advocacy organization Gawahi Mission Trust told Compass that he had the opportunity to speak with Meammon. According to Bhutto, Meammon said that he was relaxing in his room when Magdalene ran in followed by five unidentified men, from whom both of them eventually fled.
Bhutto said that Meammon was grinning about the incident as he told his version, seemingly pleased with what he had done.
The pastor said police have only charged Meammon and his accomplices with attempted murder, but that Christian organizations are urging police to file gang-rape charges. He added that police have also arrested Dr. Ferhat Abbas and another doctor identified only as Tayyab and are holding them at an undisclosed location.
A preliminary medical examination indicated that Ashraf was raped and tortured, said Natasha Riaz, a fourth-year nursing student.
“The swabs taken from her have confirmed that she was raped, and apart from Dr. Meammon, five other men were also involved,” Riaz said.
One of Ashraf’s family members told Compass that they have continued to receive threats from Meammon; the relative also said that Ashraf had complained of being harassed by him.
Dr. Donald Mall, an administrator with Seventh Day Adventist Hospital, told Compass after visiting the victim that there “are hundreds of rape cases of Christian nurses by doctors which go unreported in Pakistan,” and that the Sindh Province Health Department has ignored them.
Police sources told Compass that they are searching for Fatima, the nurse who is an alleged accomplice of the alleged rapists, and Meammon’s driver, identified only as Arshad, both still at large. Police said that when they arrived at the hospital, administrators stalled them long enough for Fatima to escape.
Since the assault, Christians have staged several demonstrations against religiously motivated violence such as the alleged assault on Ashraf and the July 19 murder of the Rev. Rashid Emmanuel and his brother Sajid Emmanuel, who were accused under Pakistan’s “blasphemy” laws. The latest demonstrations took place in Karachi on Saturday (July 24), and in Sargodha and Lahore the next day.
Report from Compass Direct News
LAHORE, Pakistan, June 23 (Compass Direct News) – A 37-year-old Christian is languishing in a Sialkot jail after police broke his backbone because his father was preaching Christ, according to a local advocacy group.
Arshad Masih had been in a hospital – chained to his bed on false robbery charges – after police torture that began Dec. 28, 2008 left him incapacitated. He was discharged from General Hospital in Lahore on Saturday (June 20) and returned to jail despite efforts by the Community Development Initiative (CDI), a support group that is providing Masih legal assistance.
CDI Research Officer Napoleon Qayyum said that hospital personnel treated Masih callously, but that conditions there were better than in the jail in Sialkot. At least in the hospital, Qayyum said, Masih’s gray-haired father was able to carry him on his shoulders when he needed to go to the bathroom.
Hospital staff members released Masih even though they knew he would not receive the medical care he needs in jail and could face further abuse, the CDI researcher said.
“We told the hospital administration and doctors that Masih would be released from jail within a few days, so he should not be discharged from the hospital as he would not be taken care of in jail, but they paid no heed to our request,” Qayyum said.
He said Sialkot police gave assurances that Masih would be released from jail if he arrived there from the hospital by 10 p.m. A police van left early Saturday morning from Sialkot to bring Masih from the hospital in Lahore to Sialkot jail, but it did not reach the hospital until 6 p.m. even though it is only 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Sialkot to Lahore.
Qayyum said officers also invented delays on the return trip.
“Despite our requests to the police van staff, they reached the jail at 10:30 p.m.,” Qayyum said. “The Sialkot police used the delays to demoralize us by creating problems so that we do not file a petition for torturing.”
The CDI official said the group’s first priority is to “take him out of Sialkot so that police may not further create problems for him.”
Murder Threat
Hajipura police detained Masih on Dec. 28 on orders from the Sadar police station in Gujranwala, where Masih’s father, Iqbal Masih, had been preaching Christ.
The elder Masih, an itinerant preacher who has traveled to remote areas to proclaim Christ for three decades, told Compass that objections to his ministry led to false accusations of robbery against his son. Area Muslims resented his preaching and his visits to a Christian family in Gujranwala, he said, and told him to stop visiting the family.
“They told me that I was preaching a false religion and should stop doing it, and that I should succumb to their pressure,” the elder Masih told Compass.
Area Muslims had complained to Gujranwala police of the elder Masih’s efforts, and officers there first sought to arrest him in a case filed against “unidentified people,” he said. Later, he said, Gujranwala police told Hajipura police to charge his son in some robbery cases, as Arshad Masih lived in the Hajipura precincts.
When police arrested Arshad Masih on Dec. 28, they tortured him for several days, the younger Masih said.
“They hung me upside down all night, beat me and used all inhumane torture methods, leaving me permanently paralyzed,” he said.
Police falsely named him in a robbery case, according to CDI. All others named in the case were released after paying bribes, advocacy group officials said. Police officers also asked Masih’s father for a bribe of 50,000 rupees [US$620], the elder Masih said.
“They asked me as well for 50,000 rupees, but I refused to pay on the grounds that it was illegal and additionally I hadn’t that much money,” Iqbal Masih said.
The complainant in the robbery case eventually testified that Arshad Masih hadn’t been among the robbers, and he was granted bail. Before court orders reached the jail, however, Sialkot police informed Sadar police officers in Gujranwala, who arrived at the jail and had Masih remanded to them for a robbery case filed against “unidentified people.”
“Because of that, Masih could not be freed for one moment,” CDI’s Qayyum said.
Gujranwala police also threatened to kill Masih in a staged police encounter if he told the court that he had been tortured, according to CDI. They also warned him that he should not act as if he were in any pain in court.
The court, however, found him unable to stand and sent him to Allama Iqbal Memorial Hospital in Sialkot for medical examination. Gujaranwala police therefore had to leave him. But police did not tell Masih or CDI staff which police station was keeping Masih in its custody at the hospital.
With the help of the American Center for Law and Justice, CDI filed a case in the Gujranwala Sessions court for Masih’s bail and also provided some assistance for his medical treatment.
On June 16, the Sadar police station investigating officer told the court that police under his command were not detaining Masih, but that the Sialkot police were. Because the Gujranwala police were not detaining him, he argued, bail orders issued on March 23 for Masih’s release pertained to Sialkot and therefore Masih’s police custody in the hospital was illegal.
“The police have been keeping us in the dark so that we could never pursue the case in the right direction,” said CDI’s Qayyum. “How can a brutally tortured patient even heal their wounds in such mental agony when his hand is always tied in chains, and two policemen are maintaining a 24-hour watch over him?”
The researcher said he maintained hope that the judicial system would provide Masih relief from his agony, which has taken its toll on his family as well. Masih has three children that he has pulled from school due to lack of money.
His wife is illiterate and cannot make a living, CDI officials said, adding that Masih’s four married sisters are the main sources of his financial support.
Report from Compass Direct News
Muslim family pays price for son’s conversion; father shunned, ordered confined to home.
DHAKA, Bangladesh, October 16 (Compass Direct News) – Muslim clerics and neighbors have ordered the father of a man who converted to Catholicism to remain confined to his house until retaliatory punishment can be exacted from the convert.
“Are you not ashamed that your son became Christian?” the founder of a mosque here asked Ruhul Amin Khandaker, father of a 32-year-old businessman who went to Australia earlier this year to court a Philippine Catholic woman, converting to her faith in April. “Why did you not sacrifice your son like cattle before telling the news to us?”
Khandaker has become a social outcast whose family lives under threat from fellow Muslims, in violation of Bangladesh’s constitution and international human rights safeguards. His son, Rashidul Amin Khandaker, has applied for protection from Australian immigration officials as he believes police in 88 percent-Muslim Bangladesh would do nothing to protect him from Islamists threatening to kill him.
“They will try to kill me anywhere, any time in Bangladesh, and the police and the authority will not protect me,” Rashidul Khandaker wrote in his plea to Australian authorities. “There are records that show a converted person is not protected by the police, authority and society.”
Khandaker’s life would be in danger if he returned to Bangladesh, said his brother-in-law, identified only as Siddik, adding that “we are also surviving in the society at our own peril.”
Rashidul Khandaker’s brother wrote him in May to cease all contact with the family. Rakibul Amin Khandaker stated in the letter that Muslim authorities had threatened to ostracize the family because of his brother’s conversion, and that his life would be in danger if he returned to Bangladesh as Muslim extremists believe they would get to heaven by punishing him.
Muslim leaders in Dhaka have ordered Khandaker’s 65-year-old father to disown his son and exclude him from his wealth and property.
“If he comes to Bangladesh, you must hand him over to us and we will punish him,” the founder of the mosque told the elder Khandaker.
Khandaker, who operates an oil lubricant refining business in the Kutubkhali area under Jatrabari police jurisdiction in central Dhaka, told Compass of the grief he experienced when his son informed the family from Sydney that he had become a Christian.
“My other sons and relatives informed it to the nearby cleric of the mosque so that the cleric could console me,” he said. “Unfortunately the cleric was so furious . . . [He] told me that, ‘You cannot keep any relationship with your son. A man of a noble Muslim family cannot be a Christian, and the society cannot accept it.”
Home Ransacked
When Rashidul Khandaker, who worked as director of marketing in his father’s business before going to Australia to pursue a relationship with a woman he met over the Internet, telephoned friends in Dhaka about his conversion, seven or eight of them broke into his house to loot his computer, scanner, printer, documents, sofa and other valuables, his father said.
“They told me, ‘We will return everything when your son comes back. Whenever he will come back, you must hand him over to us – we will take revenge for his activities. Until he comes, don’t mix with the people in the society and stay in your house.’”
The elder Khandaker said his son’s former friends also threatened to harm the family if they informed police about the looting.
“We did not file any case against them. If we file a case, they will do more harm and we can not stay in the society,” Khandaker said.
After receiving the threats from the local residents and Muslim leaders to remain confined to his house in front of his three sons and other relatives, Khandaker’s blood pressure spiked and he suffered a stroke, he said.
“Local doctors did not come to my house to treat me – they are afraid of the society and they also hate us,” he said. “I was taken to the hospital. The doctors did a brain scan and they said there was a hemorrhage on the left side of brain.”
The ostracizing of the elder Khandaker was especially painful during Ramadan, culminating with the festival of Eid al-Fitre on Oct. 2 after a month of day-long fasting and nightly feasting.
“Nobody, including neighbors and relatives, did come to my house, and I could not go to anybody’s house,” Khandaker said. “My relatives did not come lest they be in trouble. I was alone during the festival, and nothing has happened like this in my 65 years of life.”
Yet Khandaker said he does not want to deprive his son of his property and wealth. “If all of my property and wealth is destroyed, I can tolerate that, but one thing I cannot tolerate is to carry the coffin of my son on my shoulders,” Khandaker said.
Any unwillingness of authorities to defend the rights of Rashidul Khandaker or his Muslim family members against the threats against them would violate the freedom of religion asserted in the Constitution of Bangladesh, which states in Article 41.1 in Part 3 that every citizen has the right to profess, practice or propagate any religion.
“My son changed his faith according to his will, and our constitution supports this kind of activity,” the elder Khandaker said. “Why the constitutional rights should not be realized in the society?”
The social pressures also defy international human rights safeguards guaranteeing freedom of religion. Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) to which Bangladesh is a party, says that everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.
“My son converted to Christianity according to his own will – we did not support it, and we are not converted. Why should we bear the brunt of his faith?” said the elder Khandaker. “I want to get rid of such a claustrophobic, social-outcast life for my son’s conversion to Christianity.”
Report from Compass Direct News
Police in the Indian state of Orissa have arrested two so-called Christians in connection with the murder of Hindu extremist leader Laxmanananda Saraswati in August 2008. The murder of the Hindu leader was the catalyst for the current violence in India.
Maoist rebels have claimed responsibility for the murder of Saraswati and four of his followers, yet extremist Hindus have blamed Christians for the murder. The arrest of the two Christians would appear to justify the allegations of the Hindu reactionaries, yet this is still not the case.
While not denying the arrest of these two so-called Christians, the two are also closely connected with the Maoist rebels – a connection which demonstrates more correctly where the blame for Saraswati’s murder should lie.
However, should the blame rest entirely on the shoulders of the two arrested men and not with any other Maoist rebel whatsoever, then the blame would rest on these two men alone and not with Christianity itself. The actions of these two men, if indeed they are guilty of the allegations, is characteristic of behaviour that is not that of true Christianity, but is rather that of ungodliness – as is demonstrated in the behaviour of the godless thugs and terrorists who are currently persecuting Christians and others throughout India.
Should these two men be proven guilty of the murder of Saraswati and his four disciples, it will in no way justify the actions of extremist Hindus involved in assaults, rape, murders, threats, the burning of homes and Christian owned buildings, etc. If these two men are guilty they should face the consequences of their actions as outlined in Indian law, as should each and every Hindu who has participated in criminal behaviour over the last couple of months.
Reports from India indicate that a third person has also been arrested – most likely a Maoist with no interest in Christianity.
A video has emerged in the last day or so of US Republican Vice Presidency candidate Sarah Palin being blessed by a Kenyan bishop for protection from witchcraft.
The footage shows Sarah Palin standing before the congregation of the Wasilla Assembly of God Church in Anchorage, Alaska. Palin stands at the front with a man on either side placing their hands on her shoulders as Bishop Thomas Muthee leads the church in ‘prayer,’ seeking God’s aid to assist Palin in running for governor of Alaska. This assistance would include finances, to be saved from Satan and protection from witchcraft. Palin credits the Kenyan bishop for helping her attain the office of governor.
Officials for the McCain-Palin campaign say that Palin is not Pentecostal and that she attends different churches – certainly the church in the video is ‘different.’
The video is posted below – make what you will of the footage:
Random Thoughts 