People smugglers could get life sentences under Priti Patel's new plans.
Home Secretary wants to raise sentences in bid to tackle surge in migrants crossing the Channel.
Wednesday, March 03, 2021
CSW on Myanmar.
Dear Friends,
This weekend we heard the news we’ve feared since the coup began on 1 February. The military opened fire on peaceful protesters, with well over 20 confirmed dead and many more wounded.
And yet the people continue to peacefully protest. The picture of Sister Nu Thawng kneeling before the police, begging them not to shoot protesters is one that I can’t forget. Now the free world must match the courage of Myanmar’s people.
Please stand with the people of Myanmar now by calling for tough sanctions – against the military not the people.
Join in prayer with key figures in Myanmar and the UK
Please join me for Burma Day of Prayer on Monday 15 March at 7pm.
I have invited some outstanding guests who share our heart for Myanmar, including: Dr Sasa (Special Envoy of CRPH to the United Nations), Baroness Cox, Cardinal Charles Bo, Lord David Alton, Dave Eubank (Director, Free Burma Rangers) and of course CSW’s Founder President Mervyn Thomas.
I hope you can make it. Sign up here
Benedict Rogers
CSW's Senior Analyst for East Asia
Nice One Liz - Another One In The Bag!
Another £1.2bn in the bag! Liz Truss celebrates as ANOTHER Brexit deal signed
INTERNATIONAL Trade Secretary Liz Truss has signed the UK's new post-Brexit trade deal with Ghana.
Trade Wars - Who Loses Most? - You Do The Math!
The EU, taken as a whole is the UK's largest trading partner. In 2019, UK exports to the EU were £294 billion (43% of all UK exports). UK imports from the EU were £374 billion (52% of all UK imports). The share of UK exports accounted for by the EU has generally fallen over time from 54% in 2002 to 43% in 2019.10 Nov 2020
Tuesday, March 02, 2021
The Plight of Christians In Myanmar.
https://www.breakpoint.org/christians-and-the-military-takeover-of-myanmar/
Oh Dear. Stirring The Pot Again. These Sort of Actions Never Help - They Only Ever Make Matters Worse.
The time for lament is over and the time for action has come, the Church of England's Anti-Racism Taskforce has said.
The taskforce said that on the issue of racism, the Church was at "a Kairos moment where the wind of the Spirit is leading us as a body to permanent change".
The Archbishops of Canterbury and York created the taskforce last autumn to recommend changes across the Church to ensure greater racial equality.
The creation of the taskforce followed months of protest over the death of George Floyd in the US and came at a time when the Church of England was reckoning with its own legacy of racial injustice. CT.
Does The Guardian Just LOOK For Ways To Cause Trouble?
Is there a way to make vaccine passports ethically acceptable?
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Alexis Papazoglou, Guardian.
If we are to offer more freedom to some UK citizens, there must be alternative options for those who have not been vaccinated.
Blogger: WHY, amidst all of the current chaos, is this a priority?
Simply Verminous!
Boris Johnson 'condemns' former Fleet Street editor for piece revealing IRA support.
Roy Greenslade claimed he had long backed the violent tactics of Irish republicans, saying: 'I am pleased at last to come out from hiding'
Boris Johnson "outright condemns" Roy Greenslade’s public support for the IRA, his spokesman said as the former Fleet Street editor resigned his university role. ... The Times.
Good. Both Mrs Blogger and I Have Had One Dose of The Oxford Vaccine.
Vaccine IS working! New charts show UK success as Oxford jab working BETTER than Pfizer
THE OXFORD University vaccine is even more efficient than the Pfizer jab Matt Hancock has declared - with fresh data highlighting the success of Britain's immunisation programme.
Cameron's Love of Brussels Failing.
David Cameron insists Brexit referendum was 'thought through' and necessary
DAVID CAMERON has backed his decision to hold the 2016 Brexit referendum despite the fact he resigned as a result of the UK voting to leave the European Union.
Monday, March 01, 2021
New Boss At WEA Is Making All The Right Noises.
The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) was established in the UK in 1846 and has grown to be the largest evangelical organization in the world today, spanning 129 countries and representing 600 million evangelicals globally.
In a wideranging inaugural address, Dr Schirrmacher addressed the key priority areas for the WEA's work, among them the need to uphold the authority of Scripture and spread the Gospel.
"Mission is not always the being of our local churches. We often have to be reminded as evangelical churches that we have to put the witness of the Gospel into the center," he said.
Dr Schirrmacher will also work to unite the diverse global evangelical community during his term over the next five years.
Butchery of Christians In Tigray - Details Starting To Emerge.
Tigray survivors share horrors of mass killings as Sunday school kids are among thousands dead.
Tigray survivors share horrors of mass killings as Sunday school kids are among thousands dead
It is now believed that thousands, not just hundreds, of civilians, including priests and Sunday school children, were killed in the war-torn and predominantly-Christian region of Tigray in northern Ethiopia since last November as survivors have described the brutal killings they witnessed.
Organizations, including Amnesty International, CNN and Sky News, have published investigations into massacres committed against civilian populations in the Tigray region. Fighting began after the Tigray People’s Liberation Front attacked an Army base as part of an uprising in the region, which sparked military responses from Ethiopian forces joined by defense forces from neighboring Eritrea.
Priests, old men, women, entire families and a group of more than 20 Sunday school children, some as young as 14, were among the thousands killed in the Tigray region by soldiers from Ethiopia and Eritrea, according to eyewitnesses and family members who spoke with CNN.
In one instance of violence, hundreds of people were hiding in Maryam Tsiyon Church in Axum city, which is said to contain the Ark of the Covenant described in the book of Exodus, on Nov. 28.
In another attack, witnesses say Eritrean soldiers opened fire on the Maryam Dengelat Church, where hundreds of believers celebrated mass. Although many tried to flee on foot to neighboring villages, troops were said to have chased after them.
The massacre was said to have continued for three days as soldiers went house to house, dragging people from their homes and slaughtering residents.
The witnesses who spoke with CNN alleged that mothers were forced to tie up their sons in some cases.
CNN’s investigation included interviews with over 12 eyewitnesses and over 20 relatives of victims.
A pregnant woman was shot, her husband killed, and some survivors hid under the dead bodies, CNN further noted.
In a Feb. 26 report, Amnesty International reported that satellite images of mass graves in Axum suggested that hundreds of unarmed civilians were methodically hunted down and killed. Amnesty interviewed 41 survivors and witnesses to mass killings in November.
The massacre resulted in bodies being littered across the streets and plazas of Axum.
“I saw a lot of people dead on the street,” one 21-year-old male resident told Amnesty. “Even my uncle’s family. Six of his family members were killed. So many people were killed.”
Witnesses told CNN that the soldiers didn’t allow burials to occur until Dec. 2 and threatened to kill anyone they saw mourning.
A local man named Abraham, who volunteered to bury the dead under the watchful eyes of the troops, sorted through the bodies of children and teenagers, the news network reported.
He collected identity cards, made notes about their clothing or hairstyle and placed their shoes on top of the burial mounds so that their relatives could later identify the bodies. Some, he said, were unrecognizable as they had been shot in the face.
Abraham alone buried more than 50 people, including a 15-year-old named Yohannes Yosef.
"Their hands were tied ... young children ... we saw them everywhere,” Abraham was quoted as saying. “There was an elderly man who had been killed on the road, an 80-something-year-old man. And the young kids they killed on the street in the open. I've never seen a massacre like this, and I don't want to [again].”
"We only survived by the grace of God,” he added.
Sky News also spoke with witnesses, including a United States-based man identified as Solomon. Solomon was visiting with his relatives around the time of the massacre.
On the afternoon of Nov. 28, Eritrean soldiers came into Axum and killed “so many people,” Solomon was quoted as saying.
“They were targeting young people especially, and anyone they thought could be a [member of a] militia,” he recounted. “[S]o three people from one house, four siblings from one house along with their dad, they were killing them.”
Another witness, identified as Woinshet, told Sky News that she saw wild animals and birds picking at the corpses.
She shared the story of her distant relative, a 65-year-old woman.
“They knocked on the door, her son opened it, and they shot him. And then the sister comes, and they shot her, and [the troops] left the compound,” Woinshet stated. “But what they didn’t know was the mother was inside. And when she walked out of the dining room, she saw two children shot dead in her house. She was left inside for a day-and-a-half because no one could help her. They were afraid. Nobody was going to [leave] their houses. Neighbors heard the shots, but they couldn’t check on her. So she was left in her house with her two dead children.”
The older woman is now going through a mental health crisis, she said.
In its report, Amnesty International called the evidence “compelling” and “points to a chilling conclusion.”
“Ethiopian and Eritrean troops carried out multiple war crimes in their offensive to take control of Axum,” Amnesty International’s Deprose Muchena said in a statement. “Above and beyond that, Eritrean troops went on a rampage and systematically killed hundreds of civilians in cold blood, which appears to constitute crimes against humanity.”
Amnesty also notes that satellite imagery “corroborates reports of indiscriminate shelling and mass looting, as well as identifies signs of new mass burials near two of the city’s churches.”
Amnesty reports that Ethiopian and Eritrean military forces took control of Axum in a large-scale offensive on Nov. 19, killing and displacing civilians.
“In the nine days that followed, the Eritrean military engaged in widespread looting of civilian property and extrajudicial executions,” the report states. CP.
Europhiles Don't Just Try To Fool Others - They Are So Good At Fooling Themselves.
PRO-EU campaigner Femi Oluwole has struggled to defend Brussels' vaccine rollout scheme, as he insisted that the vaccination differences between the UK and the EU are not linked to Brexit.
Fictionalising History Through Our Own Higher Education Facilities.
'Soviet' universities are fictionalising history, says Universities Minister.
Michelle Donelan tells Chopper's Politics podcast: 'The so-called decolonisation of the curriculum is censoring history'
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Calls for investigation after monk killed at Ukrainian monastery A law firm representing the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) has said the ...
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£650,000 appeal launched to save two crumbling churches. St Tyfi’s Church, Dinefwr, Carmarthenshire (Photo: Friends of Friendless Churches...
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