From a faraway island without a name

From a faraway island

Without a name

Came a coconut

Floating upon the waves

Leaving behind the shares

Of the isle you call home

How long have you drifted

Upon the waves?

Lifting the lone fruit

I place it to my chest

And share its silent solitude

A kindred drifter’s loneliness

As I watch the setting sun

Be swallowed by the sea

Tears flow down my face

Not knowing where I myself may be

In The Battle of Pacific, 2011. Japanese movie

Image: zazzle.com.br

‘From MTV to Mecca’ is the truly inspiring story of Kristiane Backer,

who at the height of her career as one of Europe’s leading pop culture icons, converted to Islam. The book can be purchased from Amazon and AwakeningUK ....MASH'ALLAH http://kristianebacker.com/book

Shumayla Tanveer

I am glad I had the chance to introduce Kristiane to the culture and religion of Islam. She not only loved the sacred music and the desi food but had an open mind to study and look beyond the headlines. I admire the sincerity with which she continued to discover the faith for herself and her steadfastness in practicing. This book will inspire Muslims and non- Muslims alike. May Allah bless her and give her all success’ Imran Khan

In the early 1990s, Kristiane Backer became one of the very first presenters on MTV Europe. For years she lived and breathed the international music scene, quickly gaining a cult following amongst viewers and becoming a darling of the European press. Rubbing shoulders with the likes of Mick Jagger, Bono, Bob Geldof, Jim Kerr, Take That and Cat Stevens, Kristiane was catapulted to the forefront of popular culture.

Through a fateful meeting with the famous cricketer Imran Khan, Kristiane travelled to Pakistan, where she encountered a completely different world to the one she knew: the religion and culture of Islam. She was drawn to this way of life which was dominated by a love of God and began to read the Quran and to study books about the Faith. The more she immersed herself in the world of Islam, the more she found herself dissatisfied with her own life. With the support of friends she met through Imran Khan, Kristiane began to learn the true values of the religion and, in 1995, decided to become a Muslim.

From MTV to Mecca takes the reader on a spiritual and cultural journey across the globe – from Pakistan to Bosnia, LA to London, Hamburg to Saudi Arabia – that will inspire Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Encountering Islamic academics, musicians and fellow converts, Kristiane finds the spiritual path of Sufism and embarks on the ultimate journey – the pilgrimage to Mecca. We share Kristiane’s highs and lows as she adopts Islam; from the difficulties of finding love, to embracing Islamic practices in day-to-day life, to dealing with prejudices, misconceptions and professional struggles, and she speaks with startling honesty of what it truly means to be a practising Muslim in Western society.

Open your eyes. Your world is an illusion. Shumayla Tanveer. Facebook

From the day you were born, you have been conditioned. Your schools taught you to be quiet, neutral and numb. Your media desensitized you to the suffering of your fellow human beings and the system slowly isolated you until it somehow felt normal to feel alone on a planet with 8 billion other people on it.
You worked hard for the future with your reward always just around the next corner or just up the next step. Everything was tomorrow but tomorrow never came.

And you realized too late that you had never lived at all. Something was missing and no matter how much you worked, partied or paid you could not disguise it. You accepted it as natural for one to be wealthy whilst another is poor, or the absurd notion that we must pay back the debt of our own existence.

We traded community culture for corporate comfort and our most precious resource, our time, as a commodity.
We need to move beyond revolution and into the next stage of human evolution. A time marked by unparalleled compassion and peaceful co-existence. The shape of which we can not foresee as it must be created together.

We will take no power back as we shall empower ourselves and we shall say: We are the humans. We are awake now. We reclaim our destiny

Image: Garden Paradise in Pakistan. From the Gardens of Shahzad Ahmed

gardening.about.com

NEWBORN DIES OF NEGLECT AT LUANDA HOSPITAL

By Rafael Marques de Morais

http://makaangola.org

Groaning with labour pains, Florina Domingos writhed on the ground in the parking lot at the Augusto N’gangula Maternity and Paediatric Hospital in Luanda on the night of September 9.

Bystanders called for the medical team to come and attend to the woman in labour, who had been ordered out of the hospital waiting room by guards acting on the orders of the hospital staff. Her family members and other patients’ relatives also called frantically on the hospital personnel, who were ignoring calls for help.

Ms. Domingos’s sister-in-law, Flora Rosita, told Maka Angola that Florinda “was thrown out of the waiting room by the guards because the doctors said she was only permitted to enter the waiting room at midnight.”

Cândida Nimila, another sister-in-law, explained that the hospital staff had ordered that Ms. Domingos receive attention only at midnight. Pregnant of seven months, she had gone into labour prematurely.

Maka Angola can confirm that there were several unoccupied seats in the waiting room, and that most of the people inside were not patients.

At exactly 10:25 PM Ms. Domingos gave birth to a boy on the ground of the parking lot, between two parked ambulances, without medical assistance, and witnessed by guards, family members and Maka Angola’s journalist.

Only then did two bad-mannered and unrushed nurses arrive at the scene. On their way, they found time to instruct the guards and a policeman to expel from the hospital all those who had been trying to solicit help for Ms. Domingos and her newborn baby.

Only then did they give any attention to the new mother by cutting the umbilical cord.

One of the nurses took the newborn away, wrapped in a cloth belonging to his mother. The other nurse took Florinda Domingos by the hand and asked her to go inside the hospital, several metres away. There was no stretcher or wheelchair to take her. The family was left to clean the area where the child had been born.

The baby died in the incubator around 4:00 AM, according to the death certificate issued by the hospital. The family, who had spent the night at the hospital, was not informed until 10:00 AM. Cândida Nimila accused the medical team of hiding the truth. “This morning I had to keep insisting that they let us see the baby since that was the family’s right. Only then did they tell us the baby was dead,” Ms. Nimila said.

Hospital guards and the families of other patients told Maka Angola of corrupt practices that determine who is allowed into the waiting room and who has priority for treatment. Ms. Domingos’s family, who are poor and live in Boavista, managed to pay 2,000 kwanzas (US$20) to one of the nurses, but even this was not enough to secure a place in the waiting room.

“With no shame or anything, the nurse did not even give back the 2000 kwanzas after what happened,” Ms. Nimila said.

Meanwhile, according to official propaganda, “one of the main causes of death at the Augusto N’gangula Hospital is that women in labour arrive too late to receive help,” according to the state daily Jornal de Angola of June 4, 2012.

On August 10, health minister José Van-Dúnem reinaugurated the hospital after renovation work. The minister said: “We will continue to work so that all have access to decent health facilities, we are trying to eradicate child mortality in our country”. Florinda Domingos was thrown out of that same new hospital wing where there is a plaque next to the door to mark the reinauguration of the hospital by Mr. Van-Dúnem.

The cases recorded by Maka Angola, which will be reported at a later date, show a picture very different from that painted by the official propaganda.

The newborn boy, who was never named, was buried in Luanda’s Cemetery 14

ANGOLAN PRESIDENTIAL GUARDS ON TRIAL FOR ‘INSUBORDINATION’

By Rafael Marques de Morais

http://makaangola.org/

Fourteen soldiers for the Central Protection and Security Unit (DCPS) in the Military Bureau of the Angolan Presidency are to stand trial in the Luanda Regional Military Court starting September 18, charged with the crime of “making collective demands” (exigência em grupo).

On September 7 last year, 224 soldiers from the unit in question signed a petition addressed to the commander of the Presidential Guard Unit (UGP), Lieutenant General Alfredo Tyaunda, complaining of poor working conditions and salaries. The soldiers sent copies of the petition to the Military Judicial Police, the Military Prosecutor and the Chief of Staff of the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA).

The soldiers expressed dissatisfaction with the unequal salaries accorded to the different military units associated with the Presidency. They reminded General Tyaunda that they were not beggars but graduates of the fourth UGP training course in 2005, which the general himself had described as “the best course ever.”

The soldiers described “six years of hell” since taking the oath of allegiance. They earn on average 28,450 kwanzas (US$284.50) per month.

According to the soldiers, those sections of the presidential guard that are closest to José Eduardo dos Santos, such as his escorts, certain members of the UGP, and the Presidential Security Unit (USP), known as the Presidential Palace “jackals”, earn over 108,000 kwanzas (US$1080) per month. “While we, who also belong to the President of the Republic’s Support Services, are squashed like mosquitoes,” the petition reads.

In recent years, the main task of the DCPS has been to protect the infrastructure projects built by Chinese contractors in the context of the bilateral accords between Angola and China, which establish an oil-for-infrastructure deal between the two countries.

The presidential soldiers listed the projects that they are guarding, including the Luanda and Benguela railways, the Luanda and Bengo Special Economic Zones, Kilamba and other housing projects, and the new Luanda International Airport in Viana, as “proof that we do a lot of work without recognition.”

The document calls for order and justice, and claims that no other presidential guard in Africa is as disorganised as that of José Eduardo dos Santos. It points to acts of nepotism in the recruitment and promotion of soldiers, including “uniformed civilians”. It suggests that “uniformed civilians” are people without military training who are brought into the unit by corrupt practices. “And they [the uniformed civilians] still tell us that as long as your mother works in the kitchen, you will never go hungry,” the soldiers complain.

The document also refers to a monthly payment of US $100 that the so-called China-Africa company grants to presidential troops involved in national reconstruction projects. The soldiers say that at a certain point they stopped receiving this extra payment, and demand to know what happened to the money.

Another complaint concerns uniforms and provisions. The petition states that “uniforms arrive at the unit and disappear from the container without explanation,” and also that there are some barracks where the soldiers have to contribute to food costs from their own pockets.

The soldiers also say they are paid in cash and do not receive official payslips, so they have no idea how much they ought to be receiving. In the petition they ask the UGP finance department to clarify the procedures for the payment of salaries.

They ask General Tyaunda and his superiors “to free us from this wrongdoing and injustice” and end by saying that unless the problems are resolved “there will be no peace in our homes.”

Jail and Trial

Nine soldiers representing the whole group went to General Tyaunda’s office on September 7, 2011, to hand over their petition. They were arrested and immediately transferred to the Military Judicial Police post. The men, Augusto Magalhães de Carvalho, Eleito José Paulo Afonso, Félix Congadimwe, Francisco Tuhandeleni, José do Rosário Dedi, Kianguebene Heme João Víctor, Manuel Romão de Carvalho, Muhenawa Muefuanga and Tehecuhungana Lussati, were held for a week.

On September 14 the Luanda Regional Military Prosecutor’s office claimed that it lacked the facilities to keep the presidential guards in detention, owing to renovation work being performed on its prisons. It instructed the DCPS to keep the men confined to barracks “until the end of the preliminary instruction in their respective cases and to proceed swiftly with their presentation before the Military Tribunal.”

The nine men were joined by six others accused, according to Case Number 707/2011, of being the main instigators of the petition: Alberto Francisco Cabinda, Domingos Quixido Kambuta, Feliciano Cassule, José Marcolino Nhoca, Justo Leu Ubandula and Mário Domingos. The 15 soldiers were charged under the Law on Military Crimes (Law 4/94) with the crime of “making collective demands.” Article 25 of the law defines this crime as follows:

1. “Soldiers who make demands in a group in an unruly or mutinous manner shall be punished with a prison sentence of between 2 and 8 years.

2. Those who accept, provoke or direct actions defined in the previous item shall be punished with a prison sentence of between 2 and 12 years.”

Yet, at no time were the soldiers accused of causing any unruly act or riot.

Article 73 of the Angolan Constitution establishes the right to make a petition, denunciation, claim or complaint:

“All have the right to present, individually or collectively, to sovereign institutions or other authorities, petitions, denunciations, claims or complaints to defend their rights, the Constitution, the law or the general interest, as well as the right to be informed within a reasonable period on the result of the respective criticism.”

The Constitution does not exclude soldiers’ rights to present petitions in defense of their interest, nor does it absolve the President of the Republic from responding to the collective grievances of the soldiers who protect him.