วันศุกร์ที่ 13 ตุลาคม พ.ศ. 2560

Our Lady of Fatima: The Virgin Mary promised three kids a miracle that 70,000 gathered to see

By Katherine Arcement October 13 at 3:00 AM

The statue of Our Lady of Fatima is carried by believers during a candle procession at the holy shrine of Fatima in Portugal in 2011. (Francisco Leong/AFP/Getty Images)

The children were tending a flock of sheep outside the tiny village of Fatima, Portugal, when they first saw the angel. He was transparent, they said and shining like a crystal.

Lucia Abobora, 9, and her cousins, Jacinta and Francisco Marto, 6 and 7, were stunned.

“He said, “Do not be afraid. I am the angel of peace. Pray with me,’” Abobora — later renamed Lucia de Jesus de dos Santos — recounted in her memoir, “Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words,” published in 1976.

During the rest of 1916, as World War I raged in Europe, the angel showed himself two more times to the children. But they told no one what they’d seen.

In the spring of 1917, something more extraordinary began unfolding — visions that would put three children on the path to sainthood and transform Fatima from an ordinary village to the site of a Catholic shrine venerated and visited by millions.

The Virgin Mary appeared to the children on May 13, 1917, as “a lady dressed in white, shining brighter than the sun, giving out rays of clear and intense light,” dos Santos wrote. She promised to come to the children on the 13th of each month.

Jacinta told her mother about it. While her siblings joked about the apparition, her alarmed mother hauled her in front of their parish priest to recant. She would not.

From left to right, Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta, the three children from Fatima, Portugal, who said the Virgin Mary appeared to them on May 13, 1917. (AFP/Santuario de Fatima)

News of the visions spread by word of mouth, and the following month a small crowd waited with the children to witness the second apparition June 13. At the third sighting, on July 13, the children said the Virgin Mary revealed three secrets to them about the future.

Interest in what was happening in Fatima grew more intense.

On Aug. 13, the children were taken into custody by a state bureaucrat, who took them by car to Vila Nova de Ourem in hopes of getting them to recant their testimonies. Again, they would not.

Thousands of people began streaming to Cova da Iria, the site of the Virgin Mary apparitions. On Sept. 13, 30,000 people were present when dos Santos said the Virgin Mary told her, “In October I will perform a miracle so that all may believe.”

On that day, Oct. 13, 1917, the crowd of believers had swelled to 70,000.

About 2 p.m., some began to see what later became known in the Catholic Church as “the Miracle of the Sun.” The rains that had plagued the day ceased and the sun emerged from behind clouds to spin and tremble for 10 minutes.

“Before the astonished eyes of the crowd, whose aspect was biblical as they stood bareheaded, eagerly searching the sky, the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside all cosmic laws — the sun ‘danced’ according to the typical expression of the people,” reported O Seculo, a Lisbon newspaper.

The strange phenomena included odd colors.

“Looking at the sun, I noticed that everything was becoming darkened. I looked first at the nearest objects and then extended my glance further afield as far as the horizon. I saw everything had assumed an amethyst color. Objects around me, the sky and the atmosphere, were of the same color. Everything both near and far had changed, taking on the color of old yellow damask,” said José Maria de Almeida Garrett, a science professor from Coimbra, Portugal, who was at the scene.

Onlookers from as far as 25 miles away noted the strange phenomena in the sky.

There were scientific reasons put forth for what had happened: Perhaps the witnesses had stared at the sun too long. Perhaps it was a combination of optical effects and a real meteorological shift caused by the weather and the cloud cover.

But the miracle was acknowledged as “worthy of belief” by the Catholic Church in 1930.

By then Jacinta and Francisco Marto had both died of the flu, which had hit Fatima shortly after the visions.

Pope Paul VI holds Sister Lucia’s hand at the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima on May 13, 1967. She died in 2005 at the age of 97. (AP Photo)

Dos Santos, who told of seeing one more vision of the Virgin Mary in 1920, dedicated her life to God and became a nun of the Church of Carmel.

On May 14, 2000, Cardinal Angelo Sodanodisclosed the third of the three secrets — the only one that still remained a mystery. The first was a vision of World War I ending and World War II beginning, and the second was the rise and fall of Soviet Communism. But the third, the cardinal said, was a vision of a bishop in white falling to the ground under a hail of gunfire.

This was interpreted by the church as a foretelling of the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II’s life in 1981. The pope credited the Virgin Mary of Fatima with saving his life.

The same year as this revelation, Jacinta and Francisco Marto became the youngest children beatified — the first step to being canonized — by the Roman Catholic Church who did not die as martyrs. This year, on May 13, Pope Francis canonized the Jacinta and Francisco at a massive mass in Fatima.

In May, Pope Francis canonizes Jacinta and Francisco Marto at a mass in Fatima, Portugal before hundreds of thousands of worshipers. (EPA/MAURIZIO BRAMBATTI)

Sister Lucia de Jesus dos Santos died in 2005, at the age of 97. The process of beatification has begun for her.

And Friday, people will gather in Fatima and around the world to mark the 100th anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun.

วันพุธที่ 11 ตุลาคม พ.ศ. 2560

Cambodia, a nominal democracy, lurches toward full-blown dictatorship

Holly Robertson

Mu Sochua had never been deterred by the prospect of jail time. In her two decades as a bold voice in Cambodian politics, the deputy opposition leader has faced down her fair share of government intimidation. In 2014, she spent a week in prison.

But something about the latest government crackdown felt more sinister, she said last week, hours after fleeing to Bangkok, Thailand, to avoid being taken into custody.

“In the past, I never left my country,” she said. But this time, “I couldn’t speak freely or move freely. I thought that if my days were coming to an end, I wanted to be free.”

Cambodia, which emerged from the genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge as a nominal democracy, is lurching toward full-blown dictatorship. Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has been in power since 1985 — and who will seek another term in elections next year — has forced the closure of an independent newspaper, deported American workers for nongovernmental organizations, and effectively crushed the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, or CNRP.

“With his total control over the military, police and the courts, this is a strongman’s coup, with Hun Sen shaking off the last vestiges of democratic rule,” said Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia division at Human Rights Watch.

Authorities arrested the leader of the opposition party, Kem Sokha, on Sept. 3, and are holding him in a remote prison near the Vietnamese border on treason charges. He stands accused of conspiring with the U.S. to overthrow the government.

“He’s in a room by himself, and there’s a 24-hour surveillance camera inside his room, and also a voice recorder,” said Kem Monovithya, a CNRP spokeswoman and Kem Sokha’s daughter, who is currently in Washington. “He’s being watched 24/7.”

If convicted, Kem Sokha, 64, faces a sentence of between 15 and 30 years.

In a speech Oct. 2, Hun Sen foreshadowed the arrest of “rebels in the city” who were plotting to instigate a “color revolution,” a reference to the largely nonviolent movements to overthrow governments in places such as Ukraine (the Orange Revolution) and Georgia (the Rose Revolution). About half of the opposition’s 55 lawmakers, fearing a similar fate, have fled the country.

Mu Sochua, 63, said a high-ranking official sent her a warning that she would be arrested next. She packed her bags and left for Thailand the next day. From there, she planned to go to her reported final destination of Morocco.

“It’s the total destruction of democracy,” she said. “The red line has been crossed so many times. I don’t know what the international community is waiting for.”

On Friday, the government filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court seeking to dissolve the CNRP under controversial legislation passed this year. Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak said an investigation, ostensibly launched at the behest of two minor political parties last week, had amassed 21 pieces of evidence proving the opposition had “conspired with foreign powers to topple the government.”

The court will almost certainly act as a rubber stamp in the case, said Sebastian Strangio, a journalist and the author of “Hun Sen’s Cambodia.” The opposition would have little recourse to appeal.

“We know the courts are controlled mostly by [Hun Sen’s] Cambodian People’s Party; they take their orders from on high,” he said.

The opposition has roundly denied any conspiracy, saying the accusations are politically motivated. In an Oct. 3 letter from jail, Kem Sokha insisted his goal was “nonviolent and positive change,” according to an unofficial translation.

Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander, has ruled Cambodia for 32 years, regularly outmaneuvering challenges to his control of a country that is rapidly developing but has also been plagued by corruption, poverty and environmental destruction. Widely regarded as a tough and cunning leader, his record has been marred by human rights abuses, including several suspected political killings.

Cambodia held its first free elections in 1993 under United Nations supervision, but most analysts agree the country has never been a true multiparty democracy. Strangio said the latest crackdown represents “an end to the international democratic experiment in this country.”

The opposition party emerged as a surprise political force in 2013, when it nearly won a national election soon after forming in a merger of two smaller parties. But by the end of 2015, the government had imprisoned several of its officials, and then-opposition leader Sam Rainsy had fled into exile to avoid jail time. The latest crackdown has been intensifying since June when the opposition performed well in local elections nationwide. In a contest traditionally dominated by Hun Sen’s party, the CNRP received about 40% of the vote.

The government has also targeted media and civil society in recent months, with U.S.-backed broadcasters Radio Free Asia and Voice of America taken off the air, the Cambodia Daily newspaper closed and nongovernmental organizations such as the U.S.-funded National Democratic Institute shuttered.

It’s not just the opposition’s leadership team that is under pressure — the party said the crackdown extends all the way down to grass-roots activists. “We are being watched, investigated, and our meetings are being recorded by plainclothes security forces,” said San Soeurng, a CNRP provincial council member in Hun Sen’s home province of Kampong Cham.

The European Union and governments including the U.S. have issued statements condemning the crackdown, and Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) last week introduced a resolution urging the State Department to consider placing all senior Cambodian officials on the Specially Designated Nationals list, which could prevent them from visiting the U.S.

But Charles Santiago, a lawmaker from Malaysia who is the chair of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, said the international response — particularly from the Trump administration — so far has been “quite lame and weak.”

“If the Americans do not say something decisive about the state of democracy in the region, including Cambodia, the role of the U.S. in the region is going to be completely weakened,” he said. “It’s already in a bad shape, but it’s going to deteriorate further.”

Cambodian government spokesman Phay Siphan dismissed international criticism, saying that foreigners “do not understand Cambodian law, and they don’t have any understanding of Cambodian interests at all.” Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak said the victims of any sanctions would be “the citizens, not the leaders.”

Strangio, the author, said a strong international response is improbable and would be unlikely to have much sway over Hun Sen, who can now rely on unwavering backing from Beijing. China is Cambodia’s largest investor — in recent years, it has launched major infrastructure projects such as dams and highways, and driven a property boom in the capital, Phnom Penh. Beijing, unlike the U.S., does not make its development aid contingent on addressing human rights abuses.

“The government no longer feels the need to wind back these escalations in order to preserve Western support,” Strangio said. “They really couldn’t care less what foreign governments think.”

วันอังคารที่ 10 ตุลาคม พ.ศ. 2560

Rohingya crisis: Finding out the truth about Arsa militants

By Jonathan HeadSouth East Asia correspondent

Screengrab of Arsa video on 25 August 2017 — Image captionArsa has released videos featuring its leader Ata Ullah (center)

If there was one thing almost everyone who has monitored Muslim Rohingya in Rakhine State agreed on, it was that sooner or later their plight would breed militant resistance to the authority of the state.

The attacks that started in the early hours of 25 August on around 30 police and army posts, triggering a ruthless military counter-attack which has driven more than half a million Rohingya into Bangladesh, showed that militancy, now led by a shadowy group calling itself the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa), has taken root.

But conversations with refugees and militants in Bangladesh also show that the group's strategy is still poorly-formed and that it is not supported by all Rohingya.

Even the accounts given by the Myanmar security forces suggest that the 25 August attacks were mostly simple, almost suicidal charges by groups of men, most armed only with machetes and sharpened bamboo sticks.

One of the earliest and biggest attacks was on the police post in Alel Than Kyaw, a town on the coast south of Maungdaw.

Police Lt Aung Kyaw Moe later told a group of visiting journalists that they had advance warning of the attack and sheltered all local officials inside the barracks the night before.

At 04:00, he said two groups of around 500 men each stormed up from the beach.

They killed an immigration officer, whose house was close to the beach, but were easily driven off by police officers firing automatic weapons. Seventeen bodies were left behind.

Picture of burnt out village Alel Than Kyaw in Myanmar — Image captionThe village of Alel Than Kyaw was burnt down after the attack

This tallies with an account given to me by a Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh.

In a conversation about how he had been driven out of Rakhine state, he complained about the way the militants had tried to co-opt his village into joining the attacks in the days after 25 August.

They had helped themselves to cattle and goats, he said, telling the villagers they would be paid back when there was an independent Rohingya homeland.

And they gave new machetes to the young men and told them to attack a nearby police station.

Arsa has plenty of weapons, he remembers them saying, and would be back to back them. Around 25 men from his community did as they were told, and a number of them were killed, he said.

There was no backup from armed militants.

Media captionWatch: Who are the Rohingya?

I was able to meet a young man in his 20s, now in Bangladesh, who had joined Arsa four years before.

He described how the Arsa leader, Ata Ullah, had come to his village in 2013, telling them it was time to fight against the mistreatment of Rohingya.

He asked for five to 10 men from every community. A group was taken from his village to the forested hills, where they were trained in making crude bombs, using old car engine pistons.

Our informant said his village was encouraged by this, and began taking up food and other supplies to support the trainees. He eventually joined them.

They started patrolling the village, armed with sharpened bamboo sticks and making sure everyone attended mosque. He says he never saw any guns.

'Getting the world's attention'

On 25 August he described hearing shooting and seeing burning in the distance. The local Arsa commander - his "amir", he called him - arrived and told the men that the military was on its way and would attack them.

The men were told to launch their attack first - you are going to die anyway, he said, so die as martyrs for the cause.

Our informant said men of all ages armed themselves with knives and bamboo sticks, and charged the advancing soldiers, suffering many casualties - he named some of the dead.

After that they ran into the rice fields with their families, trying to make their way to Bangladesh. He said they were also harassed by Rakhine Buddhist men as they fled.

Rohingya refugees wait for humanitarian aid to be distributed at the Balu Khali refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh 5 October 2017. — Image captionMore than half a million Rohingya, many of them women and children, have fled to Bangladesh

What was the point of such futile attacks, I asked him?

We wanted to get the world's attention, he said. We had been suffering so much, we thought it did not matter if we died.

He denied any links with international jihadist groups - we are fighting for our rights, and to try to get guns and ammunition from the Myanmar military, that's all, he said.

His and other accounts describe a movement with a small core of several hundred full-time militants, with perhaps a handful of foreigners among them, and many thousands of untrained and unarmed followers who joined the attacks only at the last minute.

On 25 August Ata Ullah, the Pakistan-born Rohingya man who started Arsa after an earlier wave of communal violence in Rakhine state in 2012, issued a video, flanked by hooded armed fighters.

He described the attacks that day as a defensive action, against what he called a genocide against the Rohingya.

He said his fighters had no choice but to launch the attacks against a Burmese army which had "surrounded and besieged us".

He appealed for international support. He described Arakan, another name for Rakhine state, as rightfully Rohingya land.

But he has insisted in subsequent statements that Arsa has no quarrel with other ethnic groups in Rakhine state.

There was no call for solidarity from other Muslims. He did not frame his struggle in terms of jihad, or as part of a global Islamist struggle.

An aerial view showing the burnt-out village near Maungdaw township in Rakhine State, western Myanmar, 27 September 2017 — Image captionOfficials have accused Arsa militants of burning the Hindu village of Yebawkyaw and killing many of its inhabitants

Ata Ullah is known to be suspicious of other Islamist groups and does not at this stage appear to be asking them for help.

"Ata Ullah and his spokesmen have made it clear that they see themselves as an ethnic-nationalist movement," says Anthony Davis, a Bangkok-based security analyst.

"They do not have any substantive links with international jihadism, IS [Islamic State group] or al- Qaeda. They see their struggle as regaining rights for Rohingya inside Rakhine State. They are neither separatists nor jihadists."

However, the military has successfully portrayed them as a foreign-backed conspiracy to the population of Myanmar, where the media has reported little of the massive Rohingya exodus to Bangladesh.

Ata Ullah's comment about Rakhine belonging to Rohingya was picked up by armed forces commander Gen Min Aung Hlaing early last month when he warned that the military would never allow the country to lose any territory to what he called "extremist Bengali terrorists".

He described the military operation in Rakhine as addressing "unfinished business from 1942" - a reference to the time when it was a shifting frontline in the battles between British and Japanese forces.

'Rebalancing' population?

Rohingya and Rakhine Buddhists largely supported opposing sides in that war, and there were a number of massacres by militias on both sides and large population movements.

This is when many Burmese and Rakhine nationalists believe the Rohingya population in Rakhine was artificially boosted by Bengali immigrants.

By driving half the Rohingya population out of Rakhine in just four weeks, the military "clearance operations" would appear to have rebalanced the population firmly back in favor of the non-Muslims.

Media captionRohingya families face a desperate choice between violence in Myanmar and danger at sea

That leaves questions over how Arsa will function, now that it has few or no bases left inside Rakhine State.

Launching attacks over the border will be much harder, and probably will not be tolerated by Bangladesh, which, though furious with the refugee crisis dumped on it by its neighbor, has always taken care to avoid conflict along its long, porous borders.

Our informant says he is still in regular contact with his "amir" and other Arsa leaders in Bangladesh, although he has had no contact with Ata Ullah.

He says he has no idea what the movement will do next. Most people we spoke to in the camps were aware of Arsa's presence. Some were clearly nervous even speaking quietly about the movement.

There are credible reports of numbers of informers being killed by Arsa in the months leading up to the August attacks.

But there is also widespread admiration among Rohingya for the only organization to have fought back against the Myanmar military since the 1950s.

"A great deal now will depend on the attitude of Bangladesh," says Anthony Davis.

"They may choose to keep the border sealed. Or they may wish to exert some control over Arsa by supplying them with rudimentary assistance, rather than have radical Islamist groups, Bangladeshi or foreign, move in and fill a vacuum.

"There are examples elsewhere of military intelligence services using insurgent movements to exert cross-border pressure on a neighbor."