Six In The Morning

As Syrian War Roils, Sectarian Unrest Seeps Into Turkey

　

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

ANTAKYA, Turkey – At 1 a.m. last Sunday, in the farming town of Surgu, about six hours away from here, a mob formed at the Evli family’s door.

The ill will had been brewing for days, ever since the Evli family chased away a drummer who had been trying to rouse people to a predawn Ramadan feast. The Evlis are Alawite, a historically persecuted minority sect of Islam, and also the sect of Syria’s embattled leaders, and many Alawites do not follow Islamic traditions like fasting for Ramadan.

The mob began to hurl insults. Then rocks.

“Death to Alawites!” they shouted. “We’re going to burn you all down!”

Then someone fired a gun.

China rebukes US diplomat for sending ‘wrong signal’ on South China Sea

China’s foreign ministry is protesting about remarks made by the US over rising tensions in the disputed South China Sea

 Reuters in Beijing

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 5 August 2012 07.44 BST

China’s foreign ministry has called in a senior US diplomat to express “strong dissatisfaction” at remarks by the US state department raising concerns over tensions in the disputed South China Sea, in the latest political spat between the two countries.

In a statement released late on Saturday, China’s foreign ministry said assistant foreign minister Zhang Kunsheng summoned the US embassy’s deputy chief of mission Robert Wang to make “serious representations” about the issue.

The state department on Friday said it was monitoring the situation in the seas closely, adding that China’s establishing of a military garrison for the area runs “counter to collaborative diplomatic efforts to resolve differences and risk further escalating tensions in the region”.

Syria’s ancient treasures pulverised

IoS exclusive: The nation’s extraordinarily rich historical heritage is falling victim to the looting of war

ROBERT FISK    SUNDAY 05 AUGUST 2012

The priceless treasures of Syria’s history – of Crusader castles, ancient mosques and churches, Roman mosaics, the renowned “Dead Cities” of the north and museums stuffed with antiquities – have fallen prey to looters and destruction by armed rebels and government militias as fighting envelops the country. While the monuments and museums of the two great cities of Damascus and Aleppo have so far largely been spared, reports from across Syria tell of irreparable damage to heritage sites that have no equal in the Middle East. Even the magnificent castle of Krak des Chevaliers – described by Lawrence of Arabia as “perhaps the best preserved and most wholly admirable castle in the world” and which Saladin could not capture – has been shelled by the Syrian army, damaging the Crusader chapel inside.

Malawi’s one-woman revolution

She has sold the presidential jet but will Joyce Banda eventually become another African despot? Sudarsan Raghavan reports from Blantyre, Malawi.

August 5, 2012

By the standards of most African leaders, President Joyce Banda is a renegade.

Since taking office in April, she has threatened to arrest Sudan’s President, Omar al-Bashir, indicted for war crimes, if he tries to enter her country. She has suggested that Malawi repeal laws criminalising homosexuality, at a time when many other African countries are moving to strengthen theirs. And in a part of the world where repression of journalists is widespread, she has ushered in media freedoms.

”For me, Malawi comes first,” said Banda, 62, the country’s first woman President and Africa’s second, after Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

Putin’s Russia in the dock during Pussy Riot trial

The trial of three women who staged a peaceful protest in a church has focused worldwide attention on the growing crackdown in Russia since Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency in May, writes Tom Parfitt.

By Tom Parfitt, Moscow7:00AM BST 05 Aug 201

Look to your right in room number seven at Moscow’s Khamovnichesky Court and you could be in a family living room. Beige walls, a row of pot plants standing on four window-sills bathed in sunlight.

But turn your gaze to the left and an altogether different scene meets the eye: a man in camouflage fatigues holding an Alsatian on a leash, two black-clad men cradling assault rifles and, between them, three well-groomed young women sitting in a glass and steel box.

The women, casually dressed, are Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Maria Alekhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29: feminist activists from the group called Pussy Riot, who face up to seven years in jail if convicted for staging a peaceful protest in an Orthodox church.

In Brazil’s backlands, decades-old feud continues to claim lives

A long political rivalry between the Ferraz and Novaes families turned deadly in the 1990s. Revenge and counter-revenge have killed one man after another.

By Matthew Teague, Los Angeles Times

August 5, 2012

FLORESTA, Brazil – The little priest leans in, as though to make a confession. The subject is forbidden, but tonight he will talk. “A violencia,” he says.

The violence of his account seems impossible.

This small town, called Floresta, blooms in Brazil’s sertao, a wild and arid land. On its surface, Floresta is all pinks and yellows and purples, its facades covered with thick layers of paint. The houses stand in rows around a tree-lined square, and in the center sits a church.