Daily Excelsior... World

Gay-friendly S Africa debates same-sex marriages

JOHANNESBURG, Dec 2: A man wearing a bridal gown and veil marches proudly through the streets of Johannesburg accompanied by cheering gays waving rainbow-coloured flags.

Scenes like this — the annual gay pride march — have become more common in South Africa in the 10 years since the end of apartheid. In other parts of Africa homosexuality remains a strict taboo.

But while South Africa is often seen as leading the world in the campaign for gay rights, calls by activists to legalise same-sex marriages have caused new controversy — with critics describing gay nuptials as a step too far.

"I find it rather peculiar that defenders of homosexuality inevitably end up attacking and demeaning the heterosexual lifestyle," wrote one reader in the star newspaper in Johannesburg.

"(South Africans) must defend the institution of marriage as the lawful union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others," wrote another.

The debate is nowhere near the pitch reached in the United States, where the topic was seen as a factor in November’s Presidential election.

Nevertheless, from talk shows to newspaper correspondence columns, the topic has stirred emotions.

Activists say anti-gay sentiment is inevitable given the country’s rigid past, where conservative white rulers instituted apartheid race laws in what they said was an effort to defend their culture.

"Along with African, Muslim and Hindu families, same-sex families were regarded as offensive to the morals and the laws of South Africa," Evert Knoesen, head the Lesbian and gay equality project, wrote in this day newspaper.

"White Christian families with a man, his wife and their children were regarded as the only acceptable representation of marriage and family."

On Nov. 30, South Africa’s Supreme Court declared the current definition of marriage — defined as a union between a man and a woman and excluding gays — unconstitutional.

The ruling must now be confirmed by the constitutional court, which may ask Parliament to implement legislation before gay marriages get the final go-ahead.

Gay rights campaigners were ecstatic, saying one of the last major legal obstacles to equal treatment had been removed.

Conservative groups were outraged.

The African Christian democratic party, whose leader has called homosexuality "unnatural", said it would continue its opposition.

"History, nature, social science, anthropology, religion and theology all coalesce in vigorous support of marriage, as it has always been understand: A life-long union of male and female for the purpose of creating stable families," it said in a statement.

Its views echo those of many, if not most, on the continent.

Last year, outraged African Anglicans threatened to split from the Church after their North American counterparts consecrated a gay Bishop.

In October this year, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, one of the continent’s most influential leaders, backed the Bishops, denouncing homosexuality as "unbiblical, unnatural and definitely un-African".

In South Africa, one local Bishop went so far as to say in a letter to a newspaper that consensual gay sex was morally worse than heterosexual rape, prompting a fresh raft of outraged responses from both sides of the argument.

Driven by a strong gay lobby in the anti-apartheid movement, South Africa became the first country in the world to recognise gay rights in its post-apartheid constitution adopted in 1996.

Since then, gays have scored a number of legal victories, including child adoption and inheritance rights.

Jody Kollapen, head of the country’s human rights commission, said extending these to marriage seemed the next logical step.

"I don’t think there’s a basis on which any group in society can be told we will treat you equally but there will be exceptions. That becomes difficult because you become guilty of ... What I call degrees of equality and apartheid was about degrees of equality," Kollapen told .

"I think in the South Africa of today the promise of the constitution and its guarantees are there for everybody, even those who were for apartheid. You should be equal because you’re a South African." (AGENCIES)

25 years on, Mecca siege inspires Saudi militants

RIYADH, Dec 2: Just after dawn prayers on the first day of the new Muslim century, rebels stormed the grand Mosque in Mecca, seizing control of Islam’s holiest site and demanding the overthrow Saudi Arabia’s monarchy.

Fired with religious fervour and armed with rifles smuggled into the Mosque in coffins, they launched the biggest uprising since the oil boom transformed Saudi Arabia from an isolated desert kingdom into an affluent petroleum superpower.

The repercussions of the two-week rebellion, which ended 25 years ago this month, are still felt in Saudi Arabia where a new generation of Al-Qaeda linked militants are challenging the House of Saud.

Led by the wild-looking, long-haired Juhayman-al-Oteibi, hundreds of militants took over the Mosque on a November morning in 1979, new year’s day 1400 by the Muslim calendar.

Juhayman declared the pro-western Saudi rulers corrupt, called for the banning of "evils" such as radio, television and the employment of women, and announced that a new messiah had come.

The rebellion, just months after Iran’s Islamic revolution toppled another oil-rich US ally across the Gulf, was put down following heavy fighting in which 117 Juhayman supporters and a similar number of troops died.

Juhayman was captured and publicly beheaded within a month, along with 62 captured fighters.

A quarter of a century later, his doomed revolution still inspires radicals. "Juhayman is considered a kind of hero for Al-Qaeda and other Mujahideen," said novelist and reform activist Turki-al-Hamad.

Juhayman’s defiance may have owed more to local history, echoing the 1930s uprisings of Ikhwan (brotherhood) rebels against Saudi Arabia’s founder King Abdulaziz, than to the international agenda of Osama bin Laden.

But Islamist lawyer Mossen Awajy said Al-Qaeda, which has waged an 18-month campaign of violence in Saudi Arabia, was using the same language as Juhayman to rally support against a royal family it portrays as a corrupt agent of the west.

"Juhayman took over the Mosque saying the Government was infidel — Al-Qaeda are saying the same," he said.

Saud-Homoud-al-Oteibi, believed to be the latest Al-Qaeda leader operating in Saudi Arabia, modelled himself on Juhayman in his youth, according to a Saudi with links to the militants.

"Saud grew his hair long just like Juhayman, dressed like him and adopted the same Nom-de-Guerre (Abu Mohammed, or father of Mohammed)," he said. They also have the same family name but are not related.

Al-Qaeda literature on the internet is filled with references to the leader of the Mecca rebellion.

Some say it wasn’t just the militants who were influenced by the upheaval of 1979.

When King Fahd succeeded his brother Khaled three years later, he soon adopted a new title — custodian of the two holy Mosques, a reference to Mecca and Medina designed to bolster the monarchy’s religious credentials.

At the same time Saudi Arabia’s deeply conservative Muslim authorities, followers of the strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, strengthened their grip on the country.

"Juhayman was a turning point in the history of Saudi Arabia," Hamad said. "It is true the Government defeated him and his gang but they could not abolish his deep-rooted thought.

"Society started to adopt these ideas in the name of Islamic revival. Before him Saudi Arabia was more open, tolerant. After him society began heading towards fundamentalism".

The powerful religious authorities, partners of the House of Saud since the first Saudi kingdom was established in the 18th century, kept a firm control over the judiciary and schools.

They also policed cities to ensure strict compliance with demands that shops stayed shut at prayer times and women dressed modestly and did not mix with men.

Just as it rode out the Juhayman revolt, Saudi Arabia says it has now defeated the militants, whose last big attack took place six months ago in the Gulf city of Al-Khobar.

Critics say the crackdown has tackled the symptoms, not the disease which they believe afflicts their country.

"The problem is extremist thought and the hatred of others," said Mansour Nogaidan, a writer and former radical who has rejected the violence he once espoused.

"They have not struck at the root of it until now. They have even used the extremist thought as a defence against terrorism — but it is the extremism which gave rise to the terrorism".

A Government minister who condemned last year’s attack on a Riyadh residential compound, which killed Muslims in the holy month of Ramadan, said the suicide bombing was a grave sin.

But his condemnation was qualified — he said the attack was almost as sinful as polytheism. Many Wahhabi Muslims, who believe in the absolute unity of God, consider the Christian doctrine of the trinity as heresy.

One difference stands out between today’s Al-Qaeda and Juhayman — 25 years ago Saudi Arabia could shut out the world and deal with its problems as it pleased.

With the eyes of the world focused on Riyadh since the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the United States — carried out by mainly Saudi hijackers — this is no longer the case.

Under pressure from domestic reformers and from allies like the United States, Saudi Arabia has introduced modest reforms including municipal elections — for men — and revisions of school texts which critics said preached religious intolerance.

The changes may be too little, too slow for many activists but Awajy said Saudi rulers know the world is watching them.

"They are not now making concessions like they did after Juhayman," he said. "This time, although they might be thinking about it, they also have to consider external factors." (AGENCIES)

Bush urged to push intelligence bill to a vote

NEW YORK, Dec 2: Families of victims of the Sept 11, 2001 attacks criticized President George W Bush and republicans in Congress yesterday for failing to pass a law to overhaul US Intelligence Agencies.

The families demanded at a vigil in New York that Bush use his political clout to ensure that the intelligence reform bill, which has been blocked by a group of conservative republicans in the House of Representatives, is pushed to a vote next week when Congress reconvenes.

"I think America really wants to know who’s running this country," said Beverly Eckert, whose husband was killed on Sept 11. "This has to go the floor for a vote."

The bill, based on the recommendations of a Bipartisan commission that investigated the attacks, would create a new National Intelligence Director with strong budgetary authority to oversee the CIA and more than a dozen other US spy agencies.

"We’re stuck in the same political inertia," said Mary Fetchet, whose son brad was killed in the attacks. "This is a democracy. We need that vote."

Bush has expressed support for the bill, but some have questioned his commitment because the measure drew stiff opposition from the Pentagon and republican leaders.

House Armed Service Committee chairman Duncan Hunter, a California republican, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican, this month opposed the bill and effectively prevented it from coming to a vote.

Hunter asserted that proposed changes would hurt the military chain of command and could delay the flow of intelligence to troops on the front lines. Sensenbrenner opposed it because negotiators dropped immigration and law enforcement provisions that he supported.

If the House and senate cannot agree on a bill before adjourning for the year, lawmakers would have to start from scratch when the 109th Congress convenes in January.

The families have organized a series of vigils that will be held daily through Sunday and are taking place in New York, Washington, Boston and California to raise awareness about the Intelligence Reform Bill. (AGENCIES)

Thai Muslims still see chance of ending bloodshed

NARATHIWAT, THAILAND, Dec 2: In between trapping, training and trading in songbirds like other thais his age, Kawi Phupakapdee kneels toward Mecca and prays five times a day.

Phupakapdee, 26, is a Malay Muslim, a community under suspicion in mainly Buddhist Thailand after a year of bloodshed — though he and his friends are hardly the stereotype of extremist Islam so feared by Thai security forces.

Despite almost daily attacks on Thai checkpoints and outrage over the recent deaths of 78 Muslims in Thai military custody, outward signs of extremism are strangely absent from daily life in the country’s south, home to nearly 6 million Muslims.

But that could change, say local Muslim leaders who worry that young men like Phupakapdee might be driven to violence.

"They have treated us badly," Phupakapdee said, adding he was one of hundreds of Malays held in the Oct 25 protests in Tak Bai where 85 protesters died, mostly from suffocation after they were packed "like bricks" into army trucks.

"The authorities say we follow deviant teachings but we are just ordinary Muslims," he told at the Moulana Mosque in Tak Bai over the weekend.

Phupakapdee claimed he was a curious on-looker at the October protest when Thai soldiers grabbed and assaulted him before loading him onto a truck.

"I felt like I was dying," he said, recalling how people were piled on top of him in the truck that took him to a Pattani army camp two hours away. He was released after six days there.

Phupakapdee said he felt violent resistance was futile, given the heavy security presence. "I don’t think of revenge or anything like that. It won’t help matters," he said.

But he remained proudly Thai despite the ordeal, almost a paradox given the majority Malays of southern Thailand were once a hotbed of separatism and have stronger cultural, family and religious ties with neighbouring Malaysia than their homeland.

In Narathiwat province, which borders Malaysia along Golok river, thai flags flutter over wooden and brick houses built on stilts with Mosque Domes completing the skyline.

Schoolchildren in skull caps and head-scarves walk home from religious classes as farmers and traders dart about in pickup trucks in dusty towns surrounded by fertile rubber plantations and paddy fields. Ethnic malays here offer traditional Thai greetings of ‘Wai’ to each other instead of the Muslim handshake.

Military checkpoints and motorcycle patrols are also an increasing part of the landscape, but two potent ingredients in some of Asia’s other long-running conflicts — poverty and separatism — are less obvious, though the seeds are said to be there.

Regional political analyst Shamsul Akmar Musa Kamal said Thai Malays believed in cooperating with the Government despite their perceived ill-treatment over the years.

"The Thai Malay separatist movements peaked in the 1960s but have all died out because the people think it is better to work with the Government to improve their well-being," Shamsul Akmar told in Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur.

But he said the heavy military presence in the area, not seen since the 1960s, could push Malays to support die-hard separatists.

"They’re in a siege mentality. Anything can happen," Shamsul Akmar warned.

Community leaders say extremists and separatists play a small role but the military’s hardline stance is pushing Muslims to seek revenge.

Hussain Azam Talib, chief Imam of the historical central Narathiwat Mosque, said both Muslims and Buddhists had lived in peace and prosperity for generations in the south.

"From Krusek Mosque to Tak Bai, they have been cruel to us," he said. "There is no religious strife. We just want to live in peace as before," Hussain said before leading evening prayers. (AGENCIES)

UN committee calls for expanding Security Council’s strength to 24

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 2: The high-powered committee appointed on UN reforms has called for increasing the strength of the Security Council from 15 members to 24 and offers two options for the expansion.

In one, six new permanent members, with no veto power, would be among the new seats. In the other, eight new seats, with renewable four-year terms, would be added, the panel on threats, challenges and change , set up by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, says in its report.

According to former Thailand Prime Minister Anand Panyarachum, chairman of the 16-member committee, the 95-page report puts forward a new vision of collective security, one that addresses all of the major threats to international peace ane security felt around the world. The panel included Lt Gen (retd) Satish Nambiar from India.

The reports says major changes are needed in UN bodies to make them more effective, efficient and equitable. It urges the creation of a new UN body, the Peace Building Commission, which would identify countries at risk of violent conflicts, organise prevention efforts and sustain international peace-building efforts.

Also included in the report’s 101 recommendations are proposals to strengthen development efforts, public health capacity and the nuclear non-proliferation regime.

Asked about the criteria by which new Security Council permanent members would be designated, a UN spokesman noted that the report recommended that members should be chosen on the basis of their willingness to contribute to the peace and security efforts of the council, including peace-keeping and peace-building. The new members, in any case, could be selected by the General Assembly, he said.

The report affirms the right of states to defend themselves, including pre-emptively when an attack is truly imminent, and says that, in cases involving terrorists and weapons of mass destruction, the Security Council may have to act earlier, more pro-actively and more decisively than in the past.

The panel also endorses the idea of a collective responsibility to protect civilians from genocide, ethnic cleansing and comparable atrocities.

When states are unwilling or unable to fulfill their responsibility to their citizens, the wider international community should intervene, acting preventively where possible.

But the panel says that force, if needed, should be deployed as a last resort and authorized by the Security Council.

The report offers five criteria to guide the council in its decisions over whether to authorise the use of force: The seriousness of the threat, proper purpose, whether it is a last resort, whether proportional means are used, and whether military action is likely to have better or worse results than inaction. (UNI)