The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Pope Benedict XVI to visit Cuba March 26-28
- China dissident-lawyer Gao jailed in far west - brother
- Syria bloodshed defies Arab monitor mission
| Pope Benedict XVI to visit Cuba March 26-28 Posted: 01 Jan 2012 07:47 PM PST HAVANA (Reuters) - Pope Benedict XVI will visit Cuba on March 26-28 and perform two open-air masses on the communist island as part of his upcoming trip to Mexico and Cuba, Roman Catholic Church officials said on Sunday. The 84-year-old pontiff was to fly from Mexico and arrive in the eastern city of Santiago, where he will be met by President Raul Castro, and then go on to Havana on March 27.
He will perform masses in the main plazas -- both known as Revolution Square -- of the two cities and also visit Cuba's most famous religious icon, the statue of the Virgin of Charity in the town of El Cobre, the Church said. The purpose of the papal visit is in part to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the relic, said to have been found by three fishermen floating in a bay in eastern Cuba. A replica of the statue on Friday completed a 16-month pilgrimage around the island that was the first such religious display since the 1950s and a signal of improved relations between the government and the Church, which were at odds for many years following the 1959 revolution. Relations began to warm in the 1990s, a process that was aided by a 1998 visit by Pope John Paul II, and intensified in 2010 when the church brokered a deal with Castro to release political prisoners. It was not known if Benedict would meet with Fidel Castro, 85, who ruled Cuba for 49 years before his brother Raul Castro, 80, succeeded him in 2008. The elder Castro now seldom appears in public, but occasionally meets in private with visiting foreign leaders and writes columns about international affairs. The pope will go to Mexico for three days starting on May 23 before going to Cuba, Mexico church officials said on Sunday. (Reporting by Jeff Franks; Editing by Philip Barbara) Copyright © 2012 Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. | ||
| China dissident-lawyer Gao jailed in far west - brother Posted: 01 Jan 2012 07:31 PM PST BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese authorities have jailed the prominent dissident-lawyer Gao Zhisheng in the remote far west, his brother said Monday, the first confirmation of Gao's whereabouts in nearly two years in a case that has fanned criticism about secretive detentions. Gao has been imprisoned in the Shaya County Prison in Xinjiang region on charges of "inciting subversion of state power," his brother, Gao Zhiyi, told Reuters by telephone from his home in Shaanxi province, citing a court notice.
"Now we finally know where he is, I hope we can visit him in a few days, but it's a long way to travel," said Gao Zhiyi. The court notice amounted to the clearest information of Gao Zhisheng's location since April 2010, when he briefly made contact with friends and foreign reporters after being held in secretive detention for more than a year. China's state news agency Xinhua reported last month that Gao Zhisheng had been sent back to jail, ending his probation for an earlier conviction. But Xinhua did not say where Gao was, and his family and supporters believe he has been held secretively by authorities for much of the past two years. A combative Beijing-based rights advocate who tackled many causes anathema to the ruling Communist Party, Gao was sentenced to three years in jail in 2006 for "inciting subversion of state power," a charge often used to punish critics of one-party rule. Gao was given five years of probation, formally sparing him from the prison sentence. But his family was under constant surveillance and Gao was detained on and off over that time. His probation was soon to expire when the court announced that he would instead be sent to jail to serve his sentence. Gao was taken from a relative's home in Shaanxi province in north China in February 2009 -- his family says by security officers -- and had been missing since he resurfaced briefly in April 2010. Gao's wife, Geng He, and children have sought refuge in the United States where members of Congress have pressed his case. The United Nations working group on arbitrary detention said in March 2010 that Gao was being detained in violation of international law. Shaya, where the notice said Gao is jailed, is about 1,100 km (680 miles) southwest of Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang. (Reporting by Chris Buckley; Editing by Robert Birsel) Copyright © 2012 Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. | ||
| Syria bloodshed defies Arab monitor mission Posted: 01 Jan 2012 03:48 PM PST AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian security forces killed eight more protesters and an Arab League organization urged Arab monitors to leave Syria, saying unrelenting bloodshed made a mockery of their mission.
President Bashar al-Assad's forces, keen to prevent huge protest rallies under the monitors' eyes, have killed at least 286 people since December 23, the day before the mission's leader arrived in Syria, according to activists who tally casualties. Some of Sunday's eight deaths occurred when security forces fired on protesters in the Damascus suburb of Daria, they said. The Arab Parliament, an 88-strong advisory committee of delegates from the Arab League's member states, said the violence was continuing to claim many victims. "For this to happen in the presence of Arab monitors has roused the anger of Arab people and negates the purpose of sending a fact-finding mission," its chairman, Ali al-Salem al-Dekbas, said in Cairo. "This is giving the Syrian regime an Arab cover for continuing its inhumane actions under the eyes and ears of the Arab League," he said. Assad's opponents, while welcoming the Arab mission as a rare chance for outsiders to witness events in Syria, had few illusions that the observers could halt a crackdown on dissent that U.N. officials say has cost over 5,000 lives since March. The monitors are checking Syria's compliance with an Arab peace plan that calls for Assad to withdraw troops and tanks from the streets, release detainees and talk to his opponents. Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby had said it should take only a week to see if Assad was keeping his word. MONITORS VISIT DERAA "The presence of monitors has not affected the behaviour of the regime with hundreds killed and no let-up," said Rima Fleihan, from the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC). The Arab Parliament was the first body to recommend freezing Syria's League membership in protest at the bloodshed. Arab monitors visiting Deraa, a southern town viewed as the cradle of the nine-month-old revolt, went to the home of Sheikh Ahmad Hayasneh, the elderly imam of the Omari mosque where the first big protests against Assad's 11 years in power erupted in March. It was unclear if the monitors met Hayasneh, who residents say has been under house arrest for at least five months. The Arab mission is still short of its planned strength of 150 observers and it relies on the government for transport and security to monitor events across a country of 23 million. "The team has been escorted with the governor and there is no way for anyone other than security personnel to get anywhere near them," said Ibrahim Aba Zaid, an activist from Deraa. Some statements by Sudanese General Mohammed al-Dabi, the mission's leader, have suggested a soft approach to the Syrian authorities, although some monitors have not minced their words. "We saw snipers in the town, we saw them with our own eyes," one observer filmed in Deraa said in Arabic, visibly concerned. "We're going to ask the government to remove them immediately. We'll be in touch with the Arab League back in Cairo." Dabi later told the BBC the observer's remarks, shown on a YouTube clip posted Saturday, had been misreported. In another incident, shown on Al Arabiya television, a monitor in the embattled neighbourhood of Bab Amro in Homs appealed to the authorities by telephone to stop firing there. Tens of thousands of Syrians have taken to the streets in the past week in an apparent effort to show the Arab monitors the depth of their rejection of Assad's government. "The Syrians want a modern regime in the New Year," read a placard carried by protesters in a suburb of Damascus. Assad blames the unrest on foreign-backed armed Islamists who officials say have killed 2,000 security personnel. He retains the support of much of his minority Alawite community and, despite some defections, of the armed forces. While anti-Assad sentiment runs high in the provinces, there have been few protests in central parts of Damascus or Aleppo. (Writing by Alistair Lyon; editing by David Stamp) Copyright © 2012 Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
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