Archive for July 9th, 2011

Buh-bye, now

Israel on Friday largely fended off a planned “fly-in” Palestine demo by hundreds of ‘activists’, who had vowed to take commercial flights into Ben Gurion airport outside Tel Aviv and then gather in the West Bank city of Bethlehem to begin a series of demonstrations.

More than 200 international activists, mostly from European countries, were kept from boarding Israel-bound flights after Israeli officials circulated a list of names to airline officials and asked that carriers refuse them seats, officials said.

Several dozen activists, including two Americans arriving from Greece, had made it to Israel’s international airport by Friday evening. But they were intercepted by police and deported or held for questioning. Read the rest of this entry »

Horrific: Christian street-sweeper Abbas Massih lies dead after being stabbed by a muslim for refusing to obey an order

The often unseen or unrecognised Christian persecution and abuses at Pakistan’s lowest level of society have come into sharp focus, with the tragic tale of a street sweeper.

While one Christian sanitation worker in Lahore has been suspended and criminal charges filed against him for objecting to discrimination against fellow workers, another was killed the same month for not tending to a shopkeeper’s command fast enough.

Anayat Masih Sahotra, who has worked as a street sweeper for Lahore’s Solid Waste Management (SWM) department for 24 years, said he is facing baseless charges of forgery and fraud from his employers because of his work as a labor leader for area sweepers, who are nearly all Christians. Read the rest of this entry »