The Philippines passes the 2 million mark as COVID-19 cases surge in Southeast Asia

Mark R. Cristino/AP

Michael Toole, Burnet InstituteSince May, the Delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has spread rapidly through most of Southeast Asia.

Of the ten member nations of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), all but Brunei have experienced recent surges, most of which have seen the highest number of cases since the pandemic began. However, these nine countries have experienced different COVID-19 trends.

Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam reported very low daily cases throughout 2020 but are all now experiencing record surges in cases. Vietnam and Thailand are reporting 13,000-14,000 cases daily.

Singapore had a huge first wave in early 2020, reaching 1,000 cases a day, mainly affecting migrant workers. The country has now fully vaccinated 79% of its entire population but is currently experiencing a spike in new cases.

Myanmar had a surge in late 2020 and a lethal second wave this July, and cases are once again increasing.

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The three outliers that have struggled throughout most of the pandemic are Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. Indonesia’s massive third wave is now in steep decline but more than 80,000 deaths have occurred since early June.

Malaysia began to report an increase in cases in September 2020, which led to a peak in February and then to a huge ongoing third wave.

It’s now the Philippines that is cause for most concern in the region. The country has reported more than two million cases and 34,000 deaths. The daily case rate is the second highest in Southeast Asia, after Malaysia.

Our World In Data/Johns Hopkins University

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The Philippines’ fourth wave

The Philippines has experienced four waves of COVID-19. The first wave was modest, reaching a peak seven-day rolling average of 316 in early April 2020.

From early June 2020, cases began to steadily increase leading into the second wave, which reached a peak of around 4,300 daily cases in late August.

The third wave reached a peak of 11,000 average daily cases in mid-April 2021.

However, it is the fourth wave, fuelled by the Delta variant, which is the most severe since the pandemic began and shows no sign of slowing. By September 8, the daily average had reached almost 19,000 cases.

How has the Philippines responded?

The Philippines government imposed strict restrictions early in the pandemic. In mid-March 2020, President Rodrigo Duterte ordered Metro Manila and adjacent provinces to be put under “enhanced community quarantine” (ECQ).

Under ECQ, mass gatherings were prohibited, government employees worked from home, school and university classes were suspended, only essential businesses stayed open, mass transportation was restricted, and people were ordered to observe social distancing.

When ECQ was imposed on March 15, the country had reported just 140 cases and 12 deaths. Despite the restrictions, the totals reached 5,453 cases and 349 deaths one month later.

The government relied heavily on the police and military to ensure all health protocols were followed. This led critics to denounce its militarist approach. Some civic groups providing assistance to communities faced harassment and attacks.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s early response to COVID was among the strictest in the world.
Lisa Marie David/Pool/EPA

Others criticised the government for taking a war-like approach that focused on identifying and punishing those who breached the rules rather than working cooperatively with, and providing financial support to, affected communities.

The term “pasaway”, a Filipino word referring to a stubborn person, became a punitive target in government communications. Amid the lockdown, the term pasaway referred to people violating government-imposed health protocols.

At the end of May 2020, restrictions were gradually loosened, entailing the re-introduction of mass transportation and the opening of government offices and certain businesses. At this time, the average had risen to 578 daily cases, the highest since the pandemic began.

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The easing of restrictions was driven by economic factors – the unemployment rate had risen to 17.7% and 26% of businesses had closed.

Amid the gradual easing of quarantine restrictions, the Philippines saw an accelerating increase of COVID-19 cases. By the end of July, 75% of beds in intensive care units, 82% of isolation beds and 85% of ward beds in Metro Manila were occupied.

The fourth lockdown

Fast forward to early August 2021 as daily cases surged past 8,000. A new lockdown was announced in the National Capital District, which comprises more than half the country’s economy.

By August 20, Manila and surrounding provinces had been in either ECQ (enhanced community quarantine) or modified community quarantine for a total of 170 days since the beginning of the pandemic.

On that day, restrictions were eased even as daily cases surged to a record high of 17,231 and 317 deaths. More than 26% of samples tested positive, the country’s highest positivity rate so far.

The Philippines is trying desperately to spur activity in an economy that contracted a record 9.5% last year.

However, this risks having the health system totally overwhelmed. Many hospitals fear a mass exodus of nurses who are overworked, underpaid and constantly exposed to the virus. Filipino nurses are paid the lowest salaries among nurses in Southeast Asia.

What’s needed now?

The response by the Philippines has often been among the strictest in the world. However, the imposition and lifting of restrictions have not always been based on the caseload. The easing of restrictions has been driven by a desire for economic revival.

With only 14% of the population fully vaccinated and case numbers continuing to soar, the country is unlikely to vaccinate itself out of this outbreak before the health system is overwhelmed.

With cases now occurring in all 17 provinces, a clear national “vaccine plus” policy needs to be urgently implemented to save both lives and livelihoods.

This means while accelerating the vaccine rollout, there also need to be other preventive measures, such as mask wearing, physical distancing, attention to indoor ventilation, an effective test-trace-isolate system and, when necessary, localised lockdowns.

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Michael Toole, Professor of International Health, Burnet Institute

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

Why variants are most likely to blame for India’s COVID surge

Rajib Dasgupta, Jawaharlal Nehru University With more than 300,000 new COVID cases a day and hospitals and crematoria facing collapse, Director-General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has called the situation in India “beyond heartbreaking”.

India’s government has blamed the people for not following COVID-safe public health directives, but recent data shows mask use has only fallen by 10 percentage points, from a high of 71% in August 2020 to a low of 61% by the end of February.

And the mobility index increased by about 20 percentage points, although most sectors of the economy and activity had opened up. These are modest changes and do not adequately explain the huge increase in cases.

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A more likely explanation is the impact of variants that are more transmissible than the original SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Variants in India

Viruses keep changing and adapting through mutations, and new variants of a virus are expected and tracked in a pandemic situation such as this.

The Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG), a group of ten national laboratories, was set up in December 2020 to monitor genetic variations in the coronavirus. The labs are required to sequence 5% of COVID-positive samples from states and 100% of positive samples from international travellers.

The United Kingdom is currently testing about 8% of its positive samples and the United States about 4%. India has been testing about 1% altogether. INSACOG has so far tested 15,133 SARS-CoV-2 genomes. This means of every 1,000 cases, the UK has sequenced 79.5, the US 8.59, and India only 0.0552.

In the final week of December, India detected six cases of the UK variant (B.1.1.7) among international travellers.

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The current second wave started in the northwestern state of Punjab in the first half of February and has not yet plateaued. One of the advisers to the Punjab government confirmed that more than 80% of the cases were attributed to the UK variant.

Significantly, the most affected districts are from Punjab’s Doaba region, known as the NRI (non-resident Indian) belt. An estimated 60-70% of the families in these districts have relatives abroad, mostly in the UK or Canada, and a high volume of travel to and from these countries.

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B.1.617, or what has been called the “Indian double mutation”, has drawn attention because it contains two mutations (known as E484Q and L452R) that have been linked to increased transmissibility and an ability to evade our immune system.

Many experts in India now think this is driving the surge.

Even as India’s health ministry announced the detection of the mutants on March 24, it went on to add:

[…] these have not been detected in numbers sufficient to either establish or direct relationship or explain the rapid increase in cases in some states.

The head of the Indian Council of Medical Research said there was no reason for panic because mutations are sporadic, and not significant. That day, the states of Maharashtra and Punjab accounted for 62.5% and 4.5% of 40,715 new cases, respectively.

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Across the world, several key mutant strains have emerged thanks to ongoing virus replication in humans. Both ability to replicate and transmit, and a better ability to escape our immune systems, led to the variants establishing themselves as dominant strains across geographies and populations.

The UK variant (B.1.1.7) is at least 30% more transmissible. At a recent webinar, Indian experts observed the “Indian strain” (B.1.617) is similarly transmissible to the UK variant, but there is little evidence so far of it being more lethal than the original virus.

Why higher transmissibility is so concerning

According to epidemiologist Adam Kucharski at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the conundrum is this:

[…] suppose 10,000 people are infected in a city and each infects 1.1 other people on average, the low end for the estimated rate of infection in England. After a month, 16,000 people would have been infected. If the infection fatality rate is 0.8%, as it was in England at the end of the first wave of infections, it would mean 128 deaths. With a variant that is 50% more deadly, those 16,000 cases would result in 192 deaths. But with a variant that is 50% more transmissible, though no more deadly, there would be 122,000 cases after a month, leading to 976 deaths.

In all likelihood, this is the current Indian scenario: a higher overall death count despite the variants being no more fatal in relative terms.

Setting up a genomic surveillance system and consistently testing 5% of the positive samples is an expensive but important tool in the journey ahead. This can help us identify emerging hotspots, track transmission and enable nimble-footed decision-making and tailored interventions.

Rajib Dasgupta, Chairperson, Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University

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

Telecommunications Ombudsman reports surge in complaints about services delivered over NBN

NBN Co chief executive Bill Morrow will present an upbeat account of the network’s impact in a speech on Tuesday.
AAP Image/Supplied by NBN Co

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

The government has strongly challenged the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) after its report showed complaints about services delivered over the NBN surged by 204% in the second half of 2017, compared with the same period a year earlier.

Communications Minister Mitch Fifield also announced details of a review, earlier flagged, of the telecommunications consumer protections framework, saying the high level of complaints about telecommunications services generally showed “the existing model for complaints handling and redress is not working”.

Fifield said the way the information regarding the 22,827 complaints about services delivered over the NBN was presented in the TIO report, released Tuesday, “could give the impression that responsibility for this figure rests with NBN Co”.

But advice to the government from NBN Co was that of these complaints, less than 5% were sent to NBN Co as complaints to resolve.

The NBN has been been heavily criticised for a slow rollout – although it says it has met every target for the past 14 quarters – low speeds and connection problems, generating high levels of complaints.

The six months to December saw a 39% increase in NBN premises activated.

The government and NBN Co are also focusing on the 16% fall in the rate of complaints about these services from the first to the second half of 2017.

In January to June of 2017, there were 19,683 complaints about services delivered over the NBN, making the picture better for the NBN when comparisons are made between the first and second halves of the year.

But the TIO report warns generally about comparisons of the two halves of the same year because of seasonal variations, preferring to compare the same period of each year. The government rejects the seasonal variation argument, saying the TIO itself has previously made comparisons within a year. It also believes the TIO is letting retailers off the hook.

The TIO is an industry-funded complaints resolution body. The NBN is not represented on its board.

The TIO report includes complaints for the six months to December covering mobile and fixed line telephony and both pre-NBN and NBN broadband.

It received nearly 85,000 complaints in total, which was a 28.7% rise over the same period in 2016. There was a 30.7% increase in complaints from residential consumers, and a 15.6% rise in those from small businesses.

Total complaints decreased from the 92,000 in the first half of 2017.

Fifield said that no matter who was the responsible party, the complaints figures were too high. “The current model for protecting consumers needs reform”.

The review, to provide for the post 2020 environment, will be undertaken in three parts to ensure consumers

… have access to an effective complaints handling and redress scheme;

… have reliable telecommunications services including reasonable timeframes for connections, fault repairs and appointments, as well as potential compensation or penalties against providers;

… are able to make informed choices and are treated fairly by their providers in service, contracts, billing, credit and debt management and switching providers.

Meanwhile chief executive of NBN Co Bill Morrow will present an upbeat account of the network’s impact in a speech at the National Press Club on Tuesday.

He will say the network generated an extra $1.2 billion in economic activity in 2017 and is encouraging more women to become their own bosses.

Morrow, who is leaving his job at the end of the year, will present figures prepared by the economic advisory firm AlphaBeta, using census data, modelling and polling to estimate the impact of the network – labelled “the nbn effect”.

He will say that “nbn-connected women are becoming self-employed at twice the overall rate of self-employment growth in nbn areas.

“In percentage terms, these results are stunning. The number of self-employed women in nbn regions grew at an average 2.3% every year, compared to just 0.1% annual average growth in female entrepreneurs in non-nbn areas.

“If this trend continues, up to 52,200 additional Australian women will be self-employed by the end of the rollout due to the ‘nbn effect’”, he will say.

The 2017 overall $1.2 billion estimated increase in economic activity – through new jobs, businesses and greater productivity – excludes the economic stimulus of the rollout itself.

“By the end of the rollout, this ‘nbn effect’ is predicted to have multiplied to $10.4 billion a year,” Morrow will say. “This represents an extra 0.07 percentage points to GDP growth, or 2.7% of the estimated GDP growth rate in 2021. By the end of the rollout, the ‘nbn effect’ is forecast to have helped create 31,000 additional jobs,” Morrow will say.

The network is now more than halfway built. About one in three homes and businesses are connected. The rollout is due to be completed by the end of 2020. Morrow has been CEO since 2014.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

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

SRI LANKA: RASH OF ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANS REPORTED

Assaults by local mobs, including Buddhist monks, surge.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, August 17 (Compass Direct News) – Attacks on Christians in Sri Lanka have surged noticeably in recent weeks, following the government’s defeat of Tamil separatists in May.

Attacks were reported in Puttlam, Gampaha and Kurunegala districts in western Sri Lanka, central Polonnaruwa district, Mannar district in the north and Matara district in the south, according to the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka (NCEASL).

Most recently, attackers on July 28 set fire to an Assemblies of God church in Norachcholai, Puttlam district, destroying the building. The pastor received frantic calls from neighbors at about 8:45 p.m. reporting that the building was in flames, echoing a similar arson attack almost a year ago that destroyed the original building on the site.

Church members have registered a complaint with police, but at press time no arrests had been made.

When a pastor of a Foursquare Gospel church and his wife visited a church member in Radawana village, Gampaha district during the third week of July, a 50-strong mob gathered at the door and shouted that they would not tolerate any further Christian activity in the village, NCEASL reported. The mob then prevented the couple from leaving the house, hit the pastor with a rod and threw a bucket of cow dung at him.

The disturbance continued for two hours before police finally answered repeated requests for assistance and arrived at the house, arresting three people who were later released.

Earlier, on June 28, a mob consisting of more than 100 people, including Buddhist monks, surrounded the home of a female pastor of another Foursquare Gospel church in the village, according to the NCEASL. At the time the pastor, whose name was withheld for security reasons, and her husband were away. Their 13-year-old daughter watched helplessly as the mob broke in, shouted insults and destroyed chairs and other furniture.

Hearing that their home was under attack, the parents rushed to get police help, but the mob had dispersed by the time officers arrived. Police called the pastor into the Gampaha police station for questioning on July 9 and July 11; on the second occasion, protestors surrounded her and other pastors who accompanied her, spitting on them and initially preventing them from entering the police station.

Later, in the presence of Buddhist monks and other protestors, the pastor was forced to sign a document promising not to host worship services for non-family members.

Also in Gampaha district, a mob on July 14 destroyed the partially-built home of Sanjana Kumara, a Christian resident of Obawatte village. On receiving a phone call from a friend, Kumara rushed to the scene to find the supporting pillars of the house pulled down, damaging the structure beyond repair.

Villagers launched a smear campaign against Kumara on July 6, after he invited his pastor and other Christians to bless the construction of his home. As the group prayed, about 30 people entered the premises and demanded that they stop worshiping. The mob then threatened to kill Kumara, falsely accusing him of constructing a church building.

On July 8, Kumara discovered that unknown persons had broken into a storage shed on the property, stealing tools and painting a Buddhist blessing on the walls. Police were reluctant to record Kumara’s complaint until a lawyer intervened.

The Sri Lanka population is 69.1 percent Buddhist, 7.6 percent Muslim, 7.1 percent Hindu and 6.2 percent Christian, with the remaining 10 percent unspecified.

Sword Attack

In Markandura village, Kurunegala district, seven men wielding swords on July 12 attacked caretaker Akila Dias and three other members of the Vineyard Community church, causing serious injury to church members and church property. Dias and others received emergency care at a local hospital before being transferred to a larger hospital in the area for treatment.

Church members filed a complaint with police, identifying one of the attackers as the same man who had assaulted the church pastor and another worker with a machete in March; at that time police had arrested the man but released him on bail. Several other attacks followed, including one on June 29 in which the church premises were desecrated with human feces. Documents were also circulated on July 18 describing the church as a divisive force aiming to destroy peace in the local community.

On the night of July 12, attackers tore off roof tiles from the church building and threw them to the ground, leaving it exposed to the elements.

On July 5, a mob of around 100 people, half of them Buddhist monks, forcibly entered an Assemblies of God church in Dickwella, Matara district, warning church members to cease all Christian worship in the area and pasting notices on the walls declaring that “any form of Christian worship in this place is completely prohibited.”

The congregation has filed a complaint with local police.

On June 23, a Foursquare Gospel pastor from Polonnaruwa district was stopped by a group of men riding motorcycles as he drove home after attending a late evening prayer meeting. Three men wearing masks attacked him with knives and shouted, “This is your last day! If we let you live, you will convert the whole town!”

The pastor sustained severe cuts to his arms as he warded off blows aimed at his neck, before driving away to seek medical help. Police in Polonnaruwa have initiated an inquiry.

Finally, in Thalvapadu village, Mannar district, members of an Apostolic church were dedicating their newly constructed building on June 7 when a mob of about 300 people forcibly entered the premises, threatening the pastor and congregation. They demolished the new church building, throwing roofing sheets and bricks onto a plot of adjacent land.

When church members filed a complaint, police arrested seven of the attackers; a case has been filed with a local court.

Report from Compass Direct News 

AUSTRALIA: CYCLONE HAMISH INTENSIFIES TO CATEGORY 4

Cyclone Hamish has further intensified to a category 4 system as it drifts further south off the Queensland coast. The cyclone is expected to cross the coast sometime in the next 48 hours and may yet become a category 5 system with winds reaching close to 300 km an hour.

As the storm approaches the coast it is expected to bring a massive storm surge of up to 2 metres or even more, as the storm is set to strike during unusually high tides, which would bring flooding to low lying coastal areas. The heavy rain will bring further flooding to the already drenched and flooded Queensland inland.

Premier Anna Bligh has signed a ‘Declaration of a Disaster Situation’ which allows authorities to evacuate threatened areas. The declaration covers the area from Lucinda in the far north to Hervey Bay in the south.

The cyclone is now centred 250 km to the north-east of Townsville and is moving to the south-east, roughly parallel to the Queensland coast. The Whitsundays are bracing for the storm’s impact as early as tomorrow morning, with tourists and residents evacuated.

The storm system is feared to bring damage comparable to that of Cyclone Larry which devastated north Queensland several years ago.

IRAQ: FLEEING CHRISTIANS FACE NEW HARDSHIPS IN TURKEY

As renewed violence in Mosul halts return, refugees wait in Turkish legal limbo.

ISTANBUL, November 14 (Compass Direct News) – In this Turkish city’s working-class neighborhood of Kurtulus, Arabic can be heard on the streets, signs are printed in the Arabic alphabet and Iraqis congregate in tea shops.

In 99-percent Muslim Turkey, most of these Iraqis are not Muslims. And they are not in Turkey by choice. They are Christian refugees who fled their homeland to escape the murderous violence that increasingly has been directed at them.

It is hard to tell how many of Mosul’s refugees from the recent wave of attacks have made their way to Istanbul, but finding these residents here is not hard. A middle-aged Iraqi refugee who fled Mosul five months ago now attends a Syrian Orthodox Church in the poverty-stricken neighborhood of Tarlabasi, where gypsies, transvestites, and immigrants from Turkey’s east live in hopes of a better life in Istanbul.

Declining to give his name, the refugee said there is no future for Christians in Iraq and that nearly everyone he knew there wanted to leave the country. He said the only hope for Iraqi Christians is for Western countries to open their doors to Christian Iraqi refugees.

“We don’t have hope,” he said. “If these doors aren’t opened, we will be killed.”

Since October, violence in Mosul has pushed more than 12,000 Christians from their homes and left more than two dozen dead, according to U.N. and Christian organizations. In the face of Mosul violence, Iraqi Christians flee to Turkey before settling permanently in another country, usually in a place where their family has gone out before them.

 

Christian Sisters Killed

Weeks after the mass exodus of Mosul Christians to surrounding villages, Turkey and other nations, around one-third of families reportedly have returned due to the presence of 35,000 army and police and the Iraqi government offering cash grants of up to $800.

But those returning Christians were shaken again on Wednesday (Nov. 12), when Islamic militants stormed into the house of two Syrian Catholic sisters, Lamia’a Sabih and Wala’a Saloha, killing them and severely injuring their mother. They then bombed their house and detonated a second explosive when the police arrived, which killed three more.

The Christian family had recently returned after having fled Mosul. Many believe this attack will deter other Christians from returning to Mosul, and there are reports of Christians again leaving the area.

There has been a steady exodus of Christians from Iraq since the first Gulf War in 1991. The church in Iraq dates from the beginning of Christianity, but the population has plummeted by 50 percent in the last 20 years. The outflow of Iraqi Christians spiked in 2003 following the U.S.-led invasion.

Although Iraq as a whole has seen a dramatic decrease in violence due to last year’s surge in U.S. troops, the flight of Christians to Turkey has grown. One-third of the 18,000 refugees who registered in Turkey last year are from Iraq. In Syria, an estimated 40 percent of the 1.2 million Iraqis who have fled Iraq are Christians, though they make up only about 3 percent of Iraq’s population.

Monsignor Francois Yakan, the 50-year-old leader of the Chaldean Church in Turkey, said all Iraqi refugees are undergoing hardships regardless of religion, but that the situation is especially difficult for Christians since there is less support for them in Turkey.

“Muslims have the same difficulty as Christians, but there are more foundations to assist them,” he said. “The government notices Muslim immigrants, but nobody pays attention to us.”

Yakan travels to other countries to raise awareness of the plight of Iraqi Christians, trying to marshal the support of government and church leaders – last week he traveled to France, Romania and Germany. If Western governments don’t wake up to this crisis, he said, the results could be catastrophic.

“People don’t know the plight of Iraqi Christians. They have no government, no soldiers, and no power,” he said. “Christianity in Iraq is ending. Why aren’t they noticing this?”

 

Strangers in Strange Land

The unnamed Iraqi refugee in Tarlabasi said not even pleas from Iraqi priests can make them stay.

“The church in Iraq can’t stop the people from leaving because they can’t guarantee their security,” he said.

He came to Istanbul with his family but still has an adult son and daughter in the city. He hopes to join his brother in the United States soon.

A group of Iraqi refugees at a tea shop in the Kurtulus area of Istanbul interrupted their card game to talk to Compass of their troubled lives.

“We can’t find any work,” said Baghdad-born Iraqi Jalal Toma, who acted as the translator for the group. He pointed to a young man at the table and said, “He works moving boxes and carrying things, and they pay him half as much as a Turk for a day’s work.”

All of the men are Chaldean Christians, a Catholic Eastern-rite church whose historical homeland is in northern Iraq, and came from Mosul in recent months. They are chronically under-employed and rely on financial help from family members abroad to make ends meet.

They had to flee their homes at a moment’s notice, taking along their families but leaving behind their cars, houses and most of their possessions. The men hope to join family members who live in foreign countries, but they harbor few hopes that they can ever return to Iraq again.

 

Offering Relief

Work is scarce for refugees and hard to come by legally in Turkey. To survive, most Iraqi Christians rely on money from families abroad or the handful of local church charities that struggle to keep up with the overwhelming volume of refugees, such as the Istanbul Interparish Migrant Program, an ecumenical umbrella group that unites the city’s parishes to assist migrants and asylum seekers.

Another such charity is Kasdar, the Chaldean-Assyrian-Syriac Humanitarian, Social and Cultural Organization, run by Yakan, the Chaldean Church leader in Turkey.

He launched Kasdar two years ago to provide a safety net for Christian refugees who live in Turkey’s legal limbo. Kasdar assists all Christians regardless of denomination or faith tradition and has 16 volunteers from an equally diverse background.

Yakan sees thousands of refugees pass through Istanbul each year. Most of them are Chaldean, and he knows of 60-70 people who fled due to the recent October violence in Mosul. He travels constantly to visit Chaldean refugees scattered throughout the country.

When refugees first arrive in Turkey, they must register with the United Nations as asylum seekers. The Turkish police then assign them to one of 35 cities to live in as they wait to receive official refugee status. These Christians face the biggest hardships since they don’t have access to the same social resources as refugees in Istanbul, said Metin Corabatir, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman in Turkey.

“The Chaldean population faces problems in Turkey, especially due to the policy of resettling them to satellite cities,” said Corabatir. “The Chaldeans in Istanbul have NGOs [Non-Governmental Organizations] and churches to help them, but in satellite cities there is no church or community to help them.”

Most refugees send their children to school at a local center run by Caritas, a Catholic confederation of relief, development and social service organizations. Here, Iraq children receive education and lessons in basic vocational skills.

The wait for legal status can be as short as a few months or a couple of years. But complicated circumstances can push back the wait to five years, 10 years, or even 17 years – as it is now for a man who fled during the first Gulf War, Yakan of the Chaldean Church said.

Another church leader who has helped Christian refugees is 70-year-old Monsignor Yusuf Sag, vicar general of the Syrian Catholic Church in Turkey. His 350-person congregation assembles packets of clothes and food for the refugees.

Many who come to Sag also seek medical help. He has connections with doctors throughout the city, both Muslim and Christian, who offer basic treatment to refugees free of charge. Sag said he tries to help all who come to him, without asking them of their denomination or even their religion.

“Their situation is not a Christian problem, but a human problem,” he said.

Often Iraqi Christians work illegally, where they are vulnerable to extortion. Refugee workers in Istanbul said registered asylum seekers can work legally, but it is not uncommon for employers to garnish their wages or withhold them completely, with the foreigners getting little protection from police.

The Turkish government charges a refugee a residence tax of US$460 a year and will not allow them to leave the country until it is paid, making them remain in the country even longer. With all these hurdles to finding stable employment, many Iraqi refugees are never too far from homelessness.

“There was a family we found living on the streets – a husband, wife and two children,” Yakan said. “They have lived in Istanbul for six months and couldn’t even afford to pay rent.”

His foundation found the family an apartment and assisted them with rent, but they only have enough resources to help for two months.

Kasdar gave similar assistance to 54 families in October. But the organization can only help for a few months at a time and assist the most vulnerable refugees.

Report from Compass Direct News

PAKISTAN: TALIBAN BOMBS CATHOLIC GIRLS’ HIGH SCHOOL

Blast claims no victims but reflects radical Islam’s tightened grip.

ISTANBUL, October 14 (Compass Direct News) – Taliban militants bombed a Catholic-run girls’ school in Pakistan’s war-torn Swat Valley as part of a larger effort to subvert women’s status in society through Islamic law, locals say.

On Wednesday (Oct. 8) the Islamic terrorist group bombed the Convent Girls’ School in Sangota, run by the Presentation Sisters, a Catholic religious order that has opened girls’ schools around the world. Militants have threatened the school frequently for offering education to females.

No one was injured in the attack. The school had closed a few months earlier due to deteriorating security in Swat, a source told Compass. Students and faculty left in July following threats.

“The Taliban said, ‘We have asked you so many times to close down the school but you are not listening. We are going to set it on fire,’” said Yousef Benjamin, a Lahore-based peace activist.

Militants had already attacked or blown up and forced the closure of many girls’ schools in Swat, said Cecil Chaudhry, executive secretary of All Pakistan Minorities Alliance. They told the nuns they would destroy their school if it weren’t closed. Following the bombing the militants ransacked the school’s adjoining convent.

The high school enrolled approximately 1,000 female students, nearly 95 percent of them Muslim.

The Santoga school has faced threats from Islamic extremists before. It closed its doors in September 2007 after received a threatening letter from extremists that demanded all teachers and female students wear the burqa. The letter claimed the faculty was working to convert Muslim students to Christianity.

The Taliban has not singled out the school for its Christian ties but instead wants to clamp down on all girls’ schools, which they believe encourage female participation in society, government officials claim.

In the last two years it has indiscriminately targeted more than 150 public and private girls’ schools in northwest Pakistan.

“For them it doesn’t matter if it’s a Christian school, government school or a private school,” Benjamin said. “Last week I was in [the northern city of] Peshawer and the Taliban told women to not even go to the market.”

The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1994 to 2001. They severely curtailed women’s rights, barring females from education, employment or traveling outside of their homes without a male relative.

“A few years ago the Taliban government in Afghanistan did not even allow women to be seen outside their houses, and that’s the version of Islam the Taliban promotes,” Chaudhry said.

Located near the Afghanistan border, Swat has been a flash point between the country’s security forces and Islamic militants. The area used to be a thriving tourist haven with hotels and a ski resort but came under complete control of Taliban militants in September 2007.

Government security forces cleared out the Taliban from the valley in recent months, but the area came under their control once again three weeks ago.

With their re-asserted control, the Taliban has forced all Swat residents to live according to their strict lifestyle guidelines, whether Muslim or Christian.

Men have grown beards and adopted Islamic dress. Women are required to wear burqas and sit in the back seat of their own vehicles. Advertisements cannot feature pictures of women.

“The Taliban wants to create a culture of terror, insecurity and they want to impose a self-created system of sharia [Islamic law] inspired by the system in Afghanistan,” said Shabhaz Bhatti, a National Assembly member from the Punjab province and chairman of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance.

The 70 or so Christian families scattered in the valley occupy the lower class, working as laborers and street sweepers.

Since July 2007, militants and followers of Muslim cleric Maulana Fazlullah have pressured the tiny community of Christians to accept Islamic law.

 

Political Motives

Islamic militants have stepped up attacks across Pakistan in recent weeks. Last Thursday (Oct. 9) a suicide bomber injured eight people in an attack on an Islamabad police station. In September another suicide bomber killed 50 people at the Marriott Hotel.

Motivations for the surge in attacks could be political as well as religious. Pakistani forces have been cracking down on militants in the nation’s tribal areas as the government has resolved to fight domestic terrorism.

The Pakistani military launched a three-week-long air strike operation in Afghanistan in August and killed more than 400 Taliban militants. Pakistan declared a cease-fire in September during Ramadan.

The militant attacks could also be in retaliation to recent U.S. bombings against Taliban targets within Pakistan, a source told Compass.

Inter-Services Intelligence Director Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha told Pakistan’s parliament on Wednesday (Oct. 8) that the Taliban had gained complete control over certain districts of the country. The military has attempted to regain control in a bitter struggle that has claimed the lives of 1,368 troops since 2001, according to the Pakistani Daily Times.

While Christians are worried about their safety, they stress that the Taliban is a threat to all Pakistanis, regardless of religion.

They urged fellow Christians to pray for the surging violence within the country to ebb.

“We ask a special prayer for peace in our country and that the terrorist elements who believe in violence would not succeed in killing innocent people,” Bhatti said. “Pray for Pakistani Christians – may God protect them and give them courage to remain strong in their faith and witness.”

Report from Compass Direct News

GILCHRIST’S LAST HOUSE STANDING

In the aftermath of Hurricane Ike it has been revealed that in the coastal town of Gilchrist in Galveston County, Texas, there remains one single home still standing. The home that remains is that of Warren and Pam Adams.

The Adams family were obviously overjoyed to see that their home remained standing after the hurricane had passed, but were obviously very sad that the remainder of the town had been destroyed.

The house was in fact a replacement house built in 2006 for one that had been destroyed by Hurricane Rita in 2005. This replacement house stood 19 feet above the ground, allowing it to survive the fury of Hurricane Ike and its tremendous storm surge that washed away all the other homes in Gilchrist.

HURRICANE IKE

It was only a short time ago that Louisiana was stuck by a major hurricane, yet spared the wrath of another Hurricane Katrina. Now it appears to be the turn of Texas and in particular Galveston and Houston with Hurricane Ike now hitting the US gulf coast in the vicinity of those cities.

Ike has already had a devastating impact on Cuba, causing massive damage in that country. Hurricane Ike is expected to bring with it a storm tide surge of several storeys in height, which would have a massive impact on Galveston and Houston in Texas. Already there is flooding in Louisiana as a consequence of the approaching hurricane.

Residents of coastal regions in the path of Ike have been told to evacuate or face near certain death if they live in a single or two storey building. Such is the expected impact of this hurricane. Yet the latest reports out of the region suggest that as many as 90 000 people have decided to risk their lives and ride out the storm.

Hurricane Ike is not a powerful as Katrina was, yet the storm is huge and is described as being of a similar size to Texas itself. It has therefore the ability to whip up an enormous tidal surge as it approaches and hits the gulf region of the United States near Galveston.