Worldfocus

Deutsche Welle reports on women’s groups in Turkey working to stop honor killings:

Gizem Yarbil, an associate producer at Worldfocus who grew up in Turkey, argues Turkish immigrants may cling even more strongly to their customs– including honor killings– when faced with the difficulties of life in the West.

The first honor killing story I delved into as a journalist was of a Turkish girl from Germany.

Hatun Surucu was 23 years old when her youngest brother shot her at a bus stop in Berlin in 2005. She was training to be an electrician and she had a son.

She was born in Germany to Kurdish parents who had migrated to the country from Turkey. From the day she was born, she was confined to a secluded lifestyle under the strict scrutiny of her parents and her brothers. When Hatun was 16, she was married to her cousin in Turkey in an arranged marriage. She moved to a village in Turkey and had her son when she was 18. When Hatun decided to leave her marriage and moved back to Berlin, she knew she couldn’t return to her family home. She took refuge in a women’s shelter, got rid of her head scarf and started to rebuild her and her son’s life.

Hatun’s new western lifestyle was deemed dishonorable by her family. They decided she was bringing a bad name to the family so she had to be killed.

Hatun’s story is only one example of honor killings among Europe’s Muslim immigrant communities. A report by the Council of Europe warns that honor killings are far more prevalent in Europe than previously believed. Reasons for an honor killing range from having sex out of wedlock, refusing to consent to an arranged marriage, refusing to wear a head scarf– even having been raped.

Joschen Blaschke, the president of the European Migration Center at the time we interviewed him in 2006, traced the problem in Germany with the Turkish immigrant communities to the economy. He said that when the economy slumped in the 1980s in Germany, most immigrant Turks had to settle for lower wages and inferior work. He argued that this caused the community to become more isolated, and that many families became more religious and determined to preserve their culture, including the concept of “honor.”

In an article in 2008 by BBC reporter Alexa Dvorson about her chilling conversation with a group of boys in Germany of Turkish, Kurdish and Palestinian origin, echoes Blaschke’s sentiment.  Confronted by the reporter, a Kurdish teenager tries to justify honor killings.  “We have no money,” he says, “We have nothing except our honour. If we lose that, it’s the worst things that can happen to us.”

- Gizem Yarbil

Still from the documentary Burma VJ

Gizem Yarbil is an associate producer at Worldfocus.

It is difficult to be a journalist in Burma. The country has one of the worst freedom of press records in the world. According to the latest worldwide index on press freedom provided by Reporters Without Borders, Burma ranks 171 out of 175 countries.

The latest news out of the country validates Burma’s horrendous press freedom record. Just last week a military court in Burma sentenced a journalist to 13 years in prison for working with Democratic Voice of Burma, a Norway-based media outlet that reports news from Burma.

Democratic Voice of Burma relies on a courageous group of journalists on the ground in Burma. These brave men and women try to report under the extremely harsh restrictions of the authoritative regime. They operate carefully below the radar of the local authorities and smuggle their material out of the country.

This year, a documentary film that portrays the plight of these audacious undercover journalists is in the running for an Oscar as Best Documentary Feature. Burma VJ, directed by the Danish filmmaker Anders Ostergaard, tells the heroic story of Burma’s bold video journalists, armed with their battered handycams to report the uncensored truth from their country while risking torture and jail sentences.

They have to be swift and smart while filming on the streets as many around them belong to the military regime’s civil police. The footage is smuggled out of the country via the internet or trustworthy friends to Democratic Voice of Burma, where it gets distributed online to other global news outlets for free. The station also broadcasts in Burma via satellite which is now available to many in the country.

The film chronicles the events of the Saffron Revolution in September of 2007, when a group of monks started an anti-government protest on the streets of Rangoon which grew into a massive but peaceful uprising against the repressive regime. We follow the unfolding of the events through the lens of the undercover video journalists who put their lives at risk amid shooting military to bring the world’s attention to what’s happening in the country.

Their footage eventually reaches the international news outlets through Democratic Voice of Burma. As the world watches the brazen footage of the military beating and shooting at the monks and the civilians, the regime becomes aware of the power of the pictures and starts to clamp down on the journalists.

It is easy to take democracy and freedom for granted when we don’t know what it is to live without them. When I saw Burma VJ, it reminded of how important it is to live in a free, democratic society– so important that many in the world put their lives on the line for it.

Here is the trailer for Burma VJ:

- Gizem Yarbil

Israeli soldiers on leave in the city of Jaffa. Photo: Mohammad Al-Kassim

Talk about war is getting louder in the Middle Eastern press, with many speculating about a possible outbreak of hostilities not only between Israel and Hamas, but Israel and Syria, or Iran and a host of adversaries.

In a column in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, Bradley Burston writes, “The countdown to the Second Gaza War has begun in earnest.”

The peace process is widely believed to be at an impasse, and there are other significant developments as well.

This week Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak publicly warned Hamas “to watch its step,” while senior Hamas and other Palestinian factions are warning of another Israeli offensive on Gaza.

And last week Hamas blamed Israel’s Mossad for the killing of one of its a top commanders in Dubai, UAE, and vowed revenge.

The Israeli Air Force has stepped up its bombing of tunnels in Gaza and is reacting with airstrikes every time a rocket is launched out of Gaza towards Israel.

Meanwhile, in Gaza, two Palestinian factions claimed responsibility for planting two barrels of explosives that washed up in an Israeli port, marking a new tactic and an escalation of the conflict.

This week the top news out of Iran concerns the deployment of U.S. anti-missile systems off Iran’s coast in the gulf, leading to rising tensions with Tehran.

Some experts say heavyweight Saudi Arabia has been engaged in a proxy war with Iran in Yemen over Iran’s alleged support of the rebels there.

Israel could in theory find itself in a war on multiple fronts. Earlier this week in a bold statement, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said war with Syria was inevitable, and added that Iran is still a central danger to Israel’s security and all options are still on the table in how Israel deals with Iran.

Just last week, the London based pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported that Syria has called up its reserve military forces in anticipation of a full-scale war with Israel.

In Lebanon, the Secretary General of Hezbollah– the Lebanese Shi’a Islamist political and paramilitary group — Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, said his forces will “change the face of the Middle East region” if there is another war with Israel. The last time Israel and Hezbollah clashed was in the summer of 2006 and that war lasted for 34 days.

- Mohammad Al-Kassim

Mohammad Al-Kassim writes about what’s in the Middle Eastern media this week.

The topic on Al Jazeera Arabic’s controversial yet highly popular talk show “Opposite Direction” this week was the Obama presidency, one year later.

The host questioned the sincerity of President Obama’s outreach to Arabs and Muslims. Faisal al-Qasem, the Syrian host of al-Itijah al-Mo’akis, likened President Obama to a wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing.

Al-Qasem accused Obama of speaking from both sides of his mouth and alleged that the Arabs’ problem was believing Obama’s sugar-coated words:

Al Arabiya news channel reported on the upcoming African Cup football match between Egypt and Algeria. Egypt beat Cameroon 3-1 to set up a repeat of the intense World Cup playoff against Algeria.

The last time these two teams faced each other was in Khartoum, Sudan, which was followed with violence and enormous tension across the Arab world.

Today’s lead headline in Israeli center-left newspaper Haaretz was about Israeli president Shimon Peres’ speech to the German parliament. Speaking on the anniversary of the Auschwitz death camp’s liberation, Peres called for the surviving perpetrators of the Holocaust to be brought to justice.

Abdel al-Bari Atwan, the editor-in-chief of the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, published in London, wrote an op-ed yesterday on the stalled Middle East peace process — in light of U.S. envoy George Mitchell’s recent visit to the region.

Atwan, who was born in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, is an outspoken critic of many Arab governments. He attributes Mitchell’s lack of progress to:

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to retain Jewish settlements in the West Bank and keep complete control of those areas.

• The refusal of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to return to the negotiating table again without an Israeli commitment to a freeze on settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

• U.S. President Barack Obama giving in to Israeli pressure on the settlements.

Atwan argues that another intifada is likely because of the stalemate in the peace process. He also thinks Fatah and Hamas may be forced to reconcile if progress is not made.

- Mohammad Al-Kassim

Haitian children at the water’s edge. Photo: Ara Ayer

Worldfocus correspondent Benno Schmidt writes about navigating Haiti’s dilapidated infrastructure while reporting there last year.

Driving in Haiti is an experience unlike anywhere else in the world, with roads haphazardly crisscrossing one another, one- and two-way interchanges clogged with patched together cars and buses, dilapidated trucks limping along on fewer than two working axles, taxis and horse- or donkey-pulled carriages breaking down randomly or changing direction suddenly.

Simple trips of only a few miles in length turn into a half-day adventures as private construction or home improvement attempts (underscore attempts) spill into streets with no warning — trapping vehicles and blocking key arteries.

There is no ‘normal’ in getting around Haiti — international efforts in the wake of the earthquake will be hobbled by a country that doesn’t have functioning roads — much less interstate highways — and can’t support large trucks or construction equipment/bulldozers under ideal conditions, let alone after a horrific natural disaster like the recent earthquake.

There are no patterns of traffic, no recognizable right of ways, no sense of order to the mass chaos in and around the capital Port au Prince — the epicenter of the massive quake.

Driving approximates scenes straight out of ‘The Road Warrior’ (if vehicles had room to speed, or functioning mechanics to attain speed!) coupled with a spirited game of chicken.

Traffic halted along nominally one-way streets?

No worries!

Drivers violently reverse or turn around. What was once one-way is suddenly two ways.

Planning a day around well-intentioned meetings is a vain exercise if any time inside a car is required. Best to agree on an afternoon meeting time — which can quickly morph into an evening or next day rendezvous should accidents or breakdowns occur: probably the only constant while driving around Haiti.

These conditions will make international aid efforts more difficult as large trucks and earth moving equipment—so central to search/rescue/rebuilding efforts will not be able to even move initially.

Simple SUVs are often mobbed in the slums of Port au Prince when UN patrols police areas. SUVs in Haiti have a distinct otherness, a build quality and functionality quotient that screams money, food, drinkable water or work.

They are easy targets for kids and adults looking for company, water, food or work. In desperate times they will be mobbed, surrounded and halted.

In 2009, Worldfocus visited much of Haiti by car and helicopter and found medieval conditions widespread — roads abruptly dead-ending into forests or standing water with no evidence of state run public works or sanitation efforts.

This is what the international community faces when sending aid to Haiti.

Worldfocus documented flooding in the western port city of Gonaives a year after heavy mud slides left 80 percent of the city homeless or under water.

Roughly a 100 miles, the drive from the capital to Gonaives took six to nine hours depending on traffic and road conditions.

A spontaneous political demonstration devolved into a massive block party and kept us motionless for several hours on the way back as we approached the outskirts of the capital…

One year later entire areas of Gonaives were still digging out — by hand.

The hands of elderly men — 70- and 80-year-olds stood proudly with shovels outside city hall offering hourly labor to homeowners deluged with mud — again a year after tropical storms flooded Gonaives.

The odd dump trucks available were slowly moving dirt outside the city, but most of the ‘progress’ was by hand.

There weren’t enough large trucks available in all of Haiti to dig out and move the mud — so a year later people abandoned their first and second floors to standing mud that expands with moisture and brought down so many homes with folks inside.

Haiti’s sorry transportation state is further hampered by cronyism, cheap chicanery, generational corruption, political corruption, squabbling and payoff schemes that keep public projects mired in delay and argument.

Corruption in Haiti is the norm.

Aid workers will have to bring their own communication infrastructure and equipment, and treat the entire area around Port Au Prince as a mass undeveloped area in crisis dotted with broken roads, busted homes and numerous other hazards.

Getting equipment and workers into Haiti will be a lot easier than affecting change once on the ground.

- Benno Schmidt

For more Worldfocus coverage of Haiti, visit our extended coverage page: Haiti’s Poor.

Church of the Holy Rosary in Kuala Lumpur. Photo: Flickr user BernardoH

Gizem Yarbil, a producer at Worldfocus, writes about the controversy over the use of the word “Allah” in Malaysia.

Malaysia has long had a reputation for being a secular Muslim nation. But recent events are threatening its moderate image.

Nine churches have been attacked with Molotov cocktails or vandalized since last Friday following a court ruling on New Year’s Eve that overturned a government ban on the use of the word “Allah” by non-Muslims.

The court was ruling on a lawsuit filed in 2007 by the Catholic newspaper The Herald. Authorities told the newspaper it could no longer use the word “Allah” to refer to God as it was specifically a Muslim term. The government and many Malaysian Muslims contend that the use of “Allah” by Christians could cause confusion among Muslims and encourage them to convert to the Christian faith.

Many critics of the ban accuse the government of inflaming this controversy for political purposes to gain the popular support of the majority ethnic Malay Muslims. The population consists of 62 percent Muslim Malays, while Christians make up nine percent.

Critics argue that the word “Allah” predates Islam and Christians had been using the word for generations, long before the Muslims even existed. The word is Arabic and has been used by various cultures and societies where Arabic is the main language.

In his post “Allah - The Word” on the New York Times “At War” blog, Anthony Shadid writes about how the word is commonly used by non-Muslims in the Arab world in daily cultural exchanges:

“Inshallah, God willing, everyone says about everything in the future tense, from an appointment the next day to the sun rising in the east. The same goes for In Allah rad, if God wills it. The word Allah infuses virtually every salutation, greeting and condolence, spoken upon departure and arrival, and at birth and death, a centuries-long refinement of mutual social exchanges that ensures almost no moment is awkward. Kater khair Allah, a Christian in Hikmat’s town would say to his Muslim neighbor.

To him, a shared God, the God of Abraham, has a shared name, Allah.”

In a wide-ranging article written for The American Muslim in 2008, right after the word “Allah” became a controversial subject, Dr Farish A. Noor, a Malaysian political scientist and historian, writes that Malaysians did not even refer to God as “Allah” when they first converted to Islam:

“The Minister’s remark not only demonstrated his shallow understanding of Muslim culture and the clear distinction between Arab culture and Muslim theology, but it also demonstrated his own lack of understanding of the history of the Malays, who, like many non-Arabs, only converted to Islam much later from the 13th century onwards. Among the earliest pieces of evidence to indicate Islam’s arrival to the Malay archipelago are the stone inscriptions found in Malay states like Pahang where the idea of God is described in the sanskrit words ‘Dewata Mulia Raya’. As no Malay spoke or even understood Arabic then, it was natural for the earliest Malay-Muslims to continue using the Sanskrit-inspired language they spoke then. Surely this does not make them lesser Muslims as a result?”

- Gizem Yarbil

A poster produced by Diyarbakir Human Rights Association.

Born in Turkey, Worldfocus producer Gizem Yarbil recently reported, along with Bryan Myers, the Signature video Turkey’s Kurds Seek Justice for Unsolved Murders.

On the morning of Christmas Eve, Turkey woke up to a newspaper photo of a line of handcuffed Kurds in detention. Among them were several prominent Kurdish elected officials and human rights advocates.

On the same day, in early morning raids conducted in eleven cities in the southeast of the country, Turkish police arrested dozens of members of the recently banned Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP), including at least seven local mayors and other politicians. Their alleged crime was to be part of a civil and urban network of the militant separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

According to press reports, two of the arrested were prominent human rights workers in the region. One of them was Muharrem Erbey. He is a lawyer and the chairman of the Diyarbakir branch of the Human Rights Association in Turkey.

I never met Muharrem Erbey in person but talked to him several times on the phone. He helped me on a Signature story producer Bryan Myers and I were working on last May which centered around Diyarbakir and a paramilitary group with links to the Turkish state that were suspected of involvement in kidnappings and killings of Kurds in the region in the 90s.

A former member of this paramilitary group, who now resides in Sweden, came out a few years ago and confessed to taking part in some of the kidnappings and murders in the region. Last summer, he led state authorities to sites that may hold the remains of people who went missing in the 90s. Several sites have been excavated and hundreds of bones have been dug up and sent for DNA testing.

Erbey was deeply involved in these excavations. He was one of the few people allowed on the sites by the authorities when the bones came out of the ground. He was well regarded and respected by the local people, gave voice to those who couldn’t speak up for themselves,  and fought bravely for their rights.

So what did Muharrem Erbey do to make state authorities think that he was involved in an urban network of a militant group? According to the Diyarbakir Human Rights Association and confirmed by Erbey’s lawyer, as evidence, authorities pointed to his participation in a workshop to discuss constitutional amendments and a Kurdish Film Festival in Italy; speeches about Kurds in Turkey before the parliaments of Belgium, Sweden and England; and advising the mayor of Diyarbakir, who actually is not among those detained.

I recently spoke with the lawyer for Erbey and other detainees, Sezgin Tanrikulu, who is a human rights advocate himself. He said that the authorities did not give him any firm evidence that these people had any connections to the PKK in any way and that some of the “evidence,” such as in Erbey’s case, participating in a film festival, could apply to thousands of people.

When I was in the southeast of Turkey last May, it was hard not to notice the change the region has been through since the tumultuous days of the 90s when the conflict was at its peak. There was a more peaceful atmosphere and the Kurds here seemed to have real hopes for peace and reconciliation with the Turkish state. The government of the leading Justice and Development Party (AKP) had been engaging in an initiative that opened doors to more reforms and rights for Kurds.

But the latest events in Turkey are reversing this positive trend. On December 11, the Constitutional Court banned the only Kurdish political party in the parliament, which instigated unrest and riots in the region between Kurdish demonstrators and the police. And the same government that has engaged in the reform process for the Kurds has undoubtedly initiated the arrests of these dozens of elected officials and human rights advocates.

The detention of human rights workers and elected officials for being part of an alleged “urban network” of an armed, militant group without any real proof except for speaking in parliaments and participating in film festivals, is an outright abuse of democracy and will undoubtedly stall the peace process in the region.

- Gizem Yarbil

For more Worldfocus coverage of Turkey, visit our extended coverage page: Turkey between East and West.

Al-Qaeda in Yemen. Photo: Al Jazeera

Mohammad Al-Kassim is a producer with Worldfocus.

It took an incident like the Christmas day failed bombing of the Delta/Northwest airliner to bring Yemen to the forefront of the news in the U.S.

It was Yemen where Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was allegedly trained by al-Qaeda. Currently Yemen offers al-Qaeda the perfect environment to reorganize and reinvent itself, and that’s precisely why the world’s focus is now shifting to the small Arabian Peninsula nation.

It’s not news to many that Yemen has been a safe haven for al-Qaeda for many years. Yemen has a weak centralized government, tough terrain and rugged mountains — and a severely fragmented tribal population with little loyalty to the government.

Also, let’s not forget that Osama Bin Laden’s family was originally from Yemen, and the al-Qaeda mastermind still enjoys wide support there.

Last week, General David Petraeus visited the Yemeni capital of Sana’a for a meeting with President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Petraeus delivered a message of support from President Obama to the Yemeni president and told him the U.S. is pledging military aid to Yemen.

Meanwhile British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for a conference on terrorism to be held in Yemen at the end of this month. Officially, the Yemeni government is a close ally of the U.S. And it’s one of the world’s poorest countries despite being a neighbor to Saudi Arabia, which is the world’s largest oil exporters and among the region’s richest.

Internally, the weak central Yemeni government has its hands full. For the last six years, the Yemeni army have been engaged in a de facto civil war in the North with a Shi’a rebel group called the Houthis. Yemen’s government accuses the group of being loyal to Iran and receiving weapons from them. Fighting has escalated since last August.

Saudi Arabia’s army was sucked into the conflict when the Saudi government accused the Houthis of crossing the border and attacking a Saudi patrol. A short war ensued between Saudi Arabia and the rebels. Some experts - including Worldfocus contributing blogger Dwight Bashir - argue that Saudi Arabia is fighting a proxy war with Iran in Yemen.

The government also faces a strong secessionist movement in the south over perceived northern exploitation of its resources, as I reported last fall. Another problem facing Yemen is the influx of African refugees, mainly Somalis, who cross the Gulf of Aden to escape the failed Somali state. Al-Shabaab militants from Somalia have also threatened to join with al-Qaeda in the impoverished Arabian country.

The failed Christmas day bombing brought Yemen and its myriad problems forcefully to the forefront of the world’s headlines. Unfortunately, the Western media was reacting to events rather anticipating them. Hardly any Western news outlets had a real presence there until the Christmas attack.

It’s disturbing that it took such an event to shine the spotlight on Yemen. The crucial country should have been on the radar long ago.

- Mohammad Al-Kassim

A screenshot of Al Arabiya’s homepage showing Iran protesters.

Worldfocus’ Mohammad al-Kassim writes about bias in the Arab media’s depiction of events in Iran.

The post-presidential election demonstrations in Iran have been closely monitored by U.S. and Western media outlets, and the coverage is sympathetic with the reform movement.

But the coverage in the Middle East — especially the Gulf region — is conflicted.

Middle Eastern news outlets’ coverage of the events in Iran generally reflects the political ideology of the companies’ owners.

The Arabic-language satellite channel Al Jazeera, which is owned by the Qatari government, is the most influential channel in the Arab world — with an average of 45 million daily viewers. Al Jazeera continues to operate from Iran because of its favorable coverage of re-elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Qatari government is Iran’s only ally in the Gulf.

Al Jazeera’s main rival satellite channel is Al Arabiya, which is based in Dubai and partly owned by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Al Arabiya has been very aggressive in its coverage of events in Iran, which led to its ban on reporting from there and the closing of its offices by the Iranian government

In Lebanon, the pro-Iran Hezbollah news web site Al-Manar is clearly in support of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his government. On its website, it reported on remarks made by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during which the Iranian supreme spiritual leader said that the protesters were a tool of the West and that opposition leaders were responsible for Iran’s problems.

Al-Manar also reported positively on the tens of thousands of government supporters who turned out for state-sponsored rallies.

Saudi-owned Asharq Al-Awsat, an Arabic newspaper based in London, reported that Iran’s Foreign Minister said yesterday that if Britain doesn’t stop its support of the demonstrators, “it will be slapped on the mouth.”

That quote was the paper’s headline.

We can expect more of the same in the coming months, as Arab media organizations vie for political influence.

- Mohamad al-Kassim

For more, view our Voices of Iran extended coverage page and listen to our online radio show on Baha’i faith and modern Iran.

Home for the holidays

Alright so maybe it’s a little after the holidays… but it feels like home as I will be spending all week with you on Worldfocus.

It’s always nice to know you are missed and I get lots of mail whenever I return to the program. Thank you for that. Even when I’m not here, I’m watching like many fans of the show since we all know there is nothing like Worldfocus to be found anywhere on American television today.

I hope all of you had a safe and wonderful season of giving and being with loved ones.  And here’s wishing all of you an enriching New Year full of good news.

As I walked in the newsroom today I have to say it brought a smile to my face. It was like the feeling you get after having been gone for a while and you finally turn into the old familiar driveway of home.

See you tonight.

- Martin Savidge