Gaza Christians protest over forced conversions

By The Associated Press

‘If things remain like this, there’ll be no Christians left in Gaza,’ says mother of one convert who demonstrators say is being held against his will

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Dozens of Gaza Christians staged a rare public protest Monday, claiming two congregants were forcibly converted to Islam and were being held against their will.

The small but noisy demonstration showed the increasingly desperate situation facing the tiny minority.

Protesters banged on a church bell and chanted, “With our spirit, with our blood we will sacrifice ourselves for you, Jesus.”

Gaza police say the two converts are staying with a Muslim religious official at their request, because they fear retribution from their families. Two mediators said the two — a 25-year-old man and a woman with three children — appeared to have embraced Islam of their free will. Forced conversions have been unheard of in Gaza before.

Since the Islamic militant Hamas seized power five years ago, Christians have felt increasingly embattled, but have mostly kept silent.

There are growing fears among Gaza Christians that their rapidly shrinking community could disappear through emigration and conversions.

Their numbers appear to have shrunk from some 3,500 to about 1,500 in recent years, according to community estimates. They are a tiny minority among 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza, most conservative Muslims.

“If things remain like this, there’ll be no Christians left in Gaza,” said Huda Al-Amash, mother of one of the converts, Ramez, 25. She sat sobbing in a church hallway alongside her daughters, Ranin and Rinad, and a dozen other women. “Today it’s Ramez. Then who, and who will be next?”

Christians said the main reason for the shrinking numbers is emigration, since there are few jobs in Gaza.

Changing faith is a deeply traumatic affair in the Arab world, where religion is strongly interwoven with people’s identities and tribal membership. To convert often means to be ostracized by the community.

The two converts, Al-Amash, and Hiba Abu Dawoud, 31, could not be reached for comment. Abu Dawould took her three daughters with her, further enraging the community.

On Monday, groups of men and women stood in groups in the square of the ancient Church of Saint Porphyrius, angrily chanting, “Bring back Ramez!” One man angrily hit the church bell.

“People are locking up their sons and daughters, worried about the ideas people put in their head,” said Al-Amash’s mother, Huda.

Will Saudi Arabia's citizens revolt?

One of the main problems with Saudi Arabia’s political system is that there is no pre-defined mechanism for the transfer of power. Efforts by the ruling elite to resolve the problem, including Saudi King Abdullah’s formation of an allegiance council, have failed due to disputes inside the Al Saud family. 

The other major problem is the ambiguous nature of power sharing in Saudi Arabia’s political structure. The second generation of the Saudi monarchy is now embroiled in a power rivalry, which many believe will lead to the country's collapse.

Saudi rulers are trying to conceal the power struggle, but the recent escalation of disputes over choosing the crown prince and other major governmental posts clearly proves the political vulnerability of the leadership.

In a move to counter the negative effects of the internal disputes, the monarchy has expanded its foreign policy interventions. This policy has failed to calm internal protests and people are continuing to take to the street to express their legitimate demands.

The extremist idea of Wahhabism and its influence on the ruling family is another major problem that seriously damages governance in the country. It is the main source of Saudi’s anti-Shia policies that have precipitated wide-spread concern among its religious minorities.

Shias living in the eastern parts of Saudi Arabia are dissatisfied by the current political atmosphere and have repeatedly protested against the bias against them.

The Saudi government preaches democratic values to other Arab states, while it remains busy suppressing calls for the recognition of people’s rights within its borders. Herein lies the paradox of a government that is seen by many to be the next place for a second wave of the popular Arab uprisings to take root.

Hassan Ahmadian is a researcher at the Center for Strategic Research of Iran’s Expediency Council and a specialist on Saudi Arabian politics.

Google’s Marissa Mayer Will Try to Save Yahoo as CEO

by Sarah Mitroff

Longtime Google executive Marissa Mayer will become CEO of Yahoo, thrusting the prominent 37-year-old executive into a public highwire act as she tries to turn around the languishing company.

“There is a lot to do and I can’t wait to get started,” Mayer said in the official announcement.

Mayer’s eagerness aside, the move is a gamble for her. Employee number 20 at Google, Mayer became a key executive at the company, overseeing search products and user interface for five years and eventually taking over local and location services. In 2010, she ascended to Google’s elite operating committee.

Mayer’s personal wealth from pre-IPO Google stock has allowed her to buy a penthouse in San Francisco’s Four Seasons along with a home in well-to-do Palo Alto and a posh Vogue wedding.

There’s little doubt she could remain at Google, or quit conventional work entirely, and live in considerable comfort. She doesn’t need to try and revive Yahoo.

“Marissa has been a tireless champion of our users,” Google CEO Larry Page writes. “We will miss her talents at Google.”

By the end of 2011 Mayer’s influence seemed to be waning. She was among several executives pushed out of the operating committee, Reuters reported, and wasn’t visible at Google IO this past June despite having keynoted in prior years.

Still, it’s likely Mayer could have continued to make significant contributions at Google if she’d chosen to hang in. Her oversight of local put Mayer in charge of a crucial crossroads for Google.
At Yahoo, Mayer is rolling the dice on a much more daunting challenge. The company’s C-suite has been a revolving door and Yahoo has bled top talent.

“Marissa has the energy and drive Yahoo needs,” says YCombinator’s Paul Buchheit, who worked closely with Mayer during the creation of Google’s GMail. “I can’t wait to see what she does with the company.”

A former Yahoo executive who left the company in recent years says Mayer will have to move quickly to repair Yahoo’s reputation and bolster its flagging momentum. “Her joining Yahoo! is like a bomb,” this person says. “The ‘shock and awe’ will briefly destabilize the legacy elements and parties that have been holding the company back. She needs to use her first 100 days aggressively to confront entrenched interests.”

Mayer’s ascent is a sign that Yahoo will compete aggressively on technology development rather than retreating into becoming an online media company that merely sells advertising, says Morningstar analyst Rick Summer. That means going up against formidable competitors like Microsoft, Facebook — and Mayer’s former employer.

“Yahoo has had declining use in its communications services and not much mobile success,” says Summer. “It is the polar opposite from Google…. She’ll need to lead a team that creates a few strong technology products that will engage users and stem the loss in Yahoo’s search business.”

Mayer certainly has the chops to lead tech product development. She helped oversee the development of GMail, Google News and Google Images. She has a master’s degree in computer science from Stanford and is famous for her data-driven approach to product decisions.

But in other ways the job will be an odd fit. For one, Mayer has no real professional experience outside of her six different jobs at Google, a sort of parallel corporate universe where the gusher of profits from contextual advertising has subsidized virtually all of the company’s operations for more than a decade.

Also, Yahoo has for the past decade operated not like Google, which is obsessed with software development, but as a sort of media company. Since Terry Semel took the reins in 2001, Yahoo’s leadership has focused on advertising and marketing initiatives over technical advancement (with the possible exception of Jerry Yang’s brief stint as CEO). In 2009, Yahoo ceded  its once-core search engine to Microsoft, whose servers began powering Yahoo searches.

Restarting Yahoo tech development might have great long-term potential, but in the meantime it’s relatively low-tech display ads that keep the lights on at Yahoo. Mayer will need help to keep that lifeline strong.

If she does pull off an unlikely turnaround, of course, Mayer’s reputation in Silicon Valley will be sterling. She’ll join turnaround Gods like Steve Jobs at Apple and Louis Gerstner at IBM in the top tier of tech’s pantheon.

Former Yahoo employees say Mayer needs to get climbing now if she’ll ever reach those heights.
“It’s not like she needs the money,” one wrote in a closed Facebook group for Yahoo alumni. “She has to honestly feel like she can turn this ship around after it’s already hit the iceberg, which is a pretty monumental challenge.”

Russia accuses West of blackmail on Syria plans

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia on Monday accused the West of effectively trying to use blackmail to secure a new UN Security Council resolution that would authorize the use of force in Syria. 

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's comments came ahead of a meeting with Kofi Annan, the United Nations and Arab League envoy for Syria whose plan for halting the fighting is weakening amid escalating violence.

The council is debating a new resolution on Syria, spurred by the July 20 expiration of the mandate for the UN observer force there and the failure of the Annan plan.

Russia opposes any resolution that can be enforced militarily.

“To our great regret, there are elements of blackmail,” Lavrov said at a news conference. “We are being told that if you do not agree to passing the resolution under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, then we shall refuse to extend the mandate of the monitoring mission.”

“We consider it to be an absolutely counterproductive and dangerous approach, since it is unacceptable to use monitors as bargaining chips,” he said.

Throughout the 16-month Syrian crisis, Russia has adamantly opposed international military intervention, fearing a repeat of the type of international action that helped drive Libya's Moammar Gaddafi out of power.

That position has put Moscow under intense criticism. Russia has rejected the criticism by saying it does not overtly support Assad, Russia's longtime ally, and by strongly backing Annan's plan.

Russia says any change of power in Syria must be achieved through negotiation, but the Syrian opposition has repeatedly said no negotiations with the Assad regime are possible unless he first leaves power.

Lavrov reiterated Moscow's position on Monday, saying it was unrealistic to try to persuade Assad to resign.

“He won't leave, not because we are defending him, but simply because a very significant part of the population in Syria stands behind him,” he said.

Comments by Annan last week indicated he favors the British resolution draft and it was unclear if he would have any significant leverage to exert on Russia during his two-day trip to Moscow, which also includes a meeting with President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.

Lavrov said he would not characterize the situation as a stalemate, but expressed dismay with the continuing fighting.

“What is happening in Syria is horrible,” he said.

Suu Kyi mum ethnic cleansing of Muslims’

By Press TV

Myanmar’s President Thein Sein has said Rohingya Muslims must be expelled from the country and sent to refugee camps run by the United Nations.
 
The former army general said on Thursday that the "only solution" was to send nearly a million Rohingya Muslims -- one of the world's most persecuted minorities -- to refugee camps run by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
 
The UN says decades of discrimination have left the Rohingyas stateless, with Myanmar implementing restrictions on their movement and withholding land rights, education and public services.
 
Press TV has conducted an interview with Ghulam Taqqi Bangash, professor at the SZABIST University, from Islamabad, to further discuss the issue. The following is a rough transcription of the interview.
 
Press TV: Perhaps you can give us a history fact check. Who are the Rohingya Muslims since, perhaps, many are not aware of them? And if you could tell us about their past and also the fact that they have been marginalized for some time now.
 
Bangash: Yes. Historically, they belong to three different countries. Some came from China, some from very old times from Bangladesh, and some from a third country but that is history.
 
Now they stand as such, as you see, they are being eliminated. This ethnic cleansing is absolutely an international tragedy. This has been going on for the last 30 years but nobody knew about it. The persecution was there but it was not of such a huge scale as it is now.
 
Now the problem is that the government says that these people do not belong to Myanmar. This is something which is not acceptable. It is an international tragedy. It is something that those people belong to Myanmar and Bangladesh.
 
They say that they are Bangladeshis; this is absolutely incorrect. Part of them were Bangladeshis in the sense that, well, they were not Bangladeshis, they were Pakistanis, in the real sense, when we go back to history before the independence of Myanmar in 1948.
 
This is absolutely incorrect that they are outsiders, that they must be thrown out. This is ethnic cleansing and the Myanmar government is lucky in the sense that the Muslim world, the majority of the Muslim peoples around the world do not know about this tragedy.
 
We in Pakistan, for example, have always respected and always treasured, we feel proud of the Buddhist traditions in Pakistan. Right here in the suburban area of Islamabad, we have a huge Buddhist civilization, monasteries and all Buddhists are welcome to Pakistan and everywhere. People from around the Buddhist world come here.
 
But this is very strange. It’s a paradox for me to know that the Buddhists who were historically so peaceful people, they were non-violent, most of their history they were non-violent, and now certainly this is a huge shock. It is a catastrophe!
 
Not owning them, that is the government and even this Nobel prize winner, the lady [Aung San Suu Kyi] is so criminally silent about the problems of this minority in Myanmar. This is not acceptable.
 
The more Muslims know about this around the globe, the more there will be problems for the Myanmar government.
 
Press TV: Every fact that not only you have presented but our previous two guests have presented brings up the simple question -- Why? Why has this happened? Why has this been going on for such a long time? And why, for example, hasn’t the UN accepted them? Isn’t this their job? It’s odd for them not to want to serve these refugees, for example, and in addition not to put efforts as to accommodate them otherwise. It just seems very strange, the whole situation and then, for example, for the UN to react this way.
 
Bangash: You see, the problem is that southeast Asia is becoming much more inconspicuous on the economic map for the United States of America. The Americans actually want to coax them, not only Myanmar but the other countries -- that is Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, all these countries -- so that they do not have better relations with the People’s Republic of China. That is a part of the problem.
  
Recently, the American Secretary of State has, you see, the sanction issue. They should rather strengthen the sanctions against Myanmar until this problem should be solved but they are not doing that.
 
The Americans want to have better military ties with the government which the international journalist community including your good self very much know that the election was not fair.
  
Of course, there are internal problems, other problems which contribute, that the system is antiquated, it is very old, including the banking system, the labor community, the economic isolation. All those aided to the miseries of the [different] communities in Myanmar including Buddhists and the Muslims.

This does not mean that one should be so criminally silent about the plight of this ethnic cleansing.
 
Now the situation is that more and more people -- because the journalist community, although it is not as free as it should be, now at least they can write, although they are punished and several cases have been lodged against them in the courts. Still, now the situation for the journalist community is better in Myanmar.
 
In the coming days, what I can predict is that more and more Muslims around the world will know about this, and the situation can become very grave. For us in Pakistan, if the Pakistani public knows about this, then there will be problems in Myanmar, because that is something which we do not want.