TUESDAY, JULY 2, 2013
I N T E R N AT I O N A L
Women teachers on the rise in Congo BRAZZAVILLE: At the Itsali primary school, on a dusty road near Brazzaville’s airport, all but one of the 20 teachers are women, a sign of the major gender shift in the Republic of Congo’s educational system over the past two decades. The small school employs almost exclusively women, from its directors and teachers to administrators and secretaries. “It is rare to ever find even five male members of teaching staff here,” said Rachel Mfina, who has been working at Itsali since the school was founded in 2003. At Itsali, conditions are basic. Since there is not enough space to hold separate classes at the same time, lessons take place in five-hour-long “shifts”-one from early in the morning and another from 12:30 pm-while the school yard serves as a shortcut for locals. But the teachers are enthusiastic. For 25-year-old Gloire Louzolo, who joined Itsala at the beginning of the 2012-2013 academic year, teaching has always been her vocation. “I’ve loved the profession of
teaching since I was little because I liked when my nursery teacher was giving lessons,” she told AFP, her blue blouse covered in chalk dust. “I was 15 when I entered the national school for teachers (ENI) where I studied for two years. Just after that I started working,” said Louzolo. It was just over 20 years ago that the image of the teaching profession in Congo started to change. “The phenomenon of women in our education system began in 1990,” Vital Eka, general director of basic education, told AFP, pointing to the string of structural reforms that were implemented when the central African country fell into recession. “All of a sudden, teaching was the only profession that still recruited... Women showed more interest. It’s totally natural because a woman is the one who raises (children) in society,” said Eka. Men, who used to dominate the sector, now prefer to get into fields with better pay such as tax and customs services, he added. About one third of Congo’s
9,500 teachers work in primary schools, with the rise of female teachers now apparent throughout the country in both state and private institutions. “Women seem to be priority over men for teaching jobs-and there are more posts for them,” said 49-year-old Aime Godefroy Dianzinga, the parent of an Itsali student. According to official statistics, the capital Brazzaville tops the league with a record of 1,254 women among its 1,487 teachers. Coincidence or not, Congo boasts a high level of literacy, which stood at 87 percent in 2011 for a population of 3.6 million. Christophe Poaty, a spokesman for the CRPE teaching union, says women have come to the fore in the world of teaching “because the training is shorter and their salary arrives more quickly”. As for the salaries in Congo-an impoverished nation with significant oil resources wracked by two civil warsteachers can expect to earn a lowly 80,000 to 100,000 FCFA (130 to 152 euros) a month. — AFP
BRAZZAVILLE: Photo shows Congolese teacher Gloire Louzolo, 25, speaking to pupils in a classroom of the Itsali school in Brazzaville. — AFP
In crisis-hit Athens, plans for a mosque reveal deep divisions Athens - one of few EU capitals without formal mosque
JOHANNESBURG: Get well soon messages and drawings are seen outside Nelson Mandela’s house in Johannesburg, South Africa yesterday. — AFP
With Mandela, end-of-life care dilemmas magnified CHICAGO: The emotional pain and practical demands facing Nelson Mandela’s family are universal: confronting the final days of an elderly loved one. There are no rules for how or when the end may arrive. Some choose to let go with little medical interference; others seek aggressive treatment. Mandela’s status as a respected global figure only complicates the situation, doctors and end-of-life experts say. Mandela “is not only revered he is loved and profoundly admired by people all over the world and the sense of letting go must be difficult for everyone involved,” said Dr William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University. In much of Africa, people are considered fortunate to live past age 60. For those who reach old age, death is still seen as sad, but friends and family typically celebrate with big parties to honor a life well-lived. Taking extraordinary measures to keep that person alive would be considered dishonorable, said Dr Sola Olopade, the Nigerianborn clinical director for the University of Chicago’s Center for Global Health. If such measures are being used for Mandela, many could consider it “quite painful,” Olopade said, “because those are not the last memories you want to have for someone with such an exemplary life.” US doctors said Mandela’s lung infection is most likely pneumonia, a very common cause of illness and death in the elderly. The infection is usually caused by bacteria and causes lungs to fill with fluid or pus, making breathing difficult and often causing fever and weakness. Treatment includes antibiotics and extra oxygen, often from a
mechanical ventilator. In the United States, an elderly person critically ill with pneumonia would typically be hospitalized in an intensive care unit and put on a mechanical ventilator, or breathing machine, said Dr JP Kress. He is director of the University of Chicago’s medical intensive care unit’s section on lung and critical care. Ventilators often require a breathing tube down the throat, and patients need to be sedated because of the discomfort. These patients typically are hooked up to feeding tubes, intravenous fluids and all kinds of monitoring machines to check heart rate, blood pressure and other functions. For long stays, lying prone in a hospital bed, they have to be periodically moved into different positions to prevent bed sores; their arms and legs have to be exercised to fight muscle wasting. Mandela has been hospitalized several times since December for a recurring lung infection, and he has had tuberculosis. In a hospitalization in March and April, doctors drained fluid from around his lungs, making it easier for him to breathe. He got care at home until he returned to the hospital on June 8. For elderly patients hospitalized repeatedly with lung problems, the chances for recovery are often grim, Kress said. “It’s possible he’s sitting in a chair asking, ‘When am I going to get out of the hospital?’ but that’s very unlikely,” he said. Patients so critically ill may have ups and downs, and small changes like needing a little less help from a ventilator may be seen as a sign of improvement even when the outlook remains poor, Kress said. —AP
US’ Snowden: a very modern spy thriller HONG KONG: A lone hero is on the run, eluding a spy-hunt across a globe-trotting storyboard as he strives to expose wrongdoing at the heart of Washington’s vengeful intelligence apparatus. The script’s ending is not yet written but that, for his supporters at least, is the Jason Bourne -style narrative of Edward Snowden. For them, the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor’s exposure of a many-tentacled eavesdropping campaign represents the made -forHollywood stand of one man fighting impossible odds. For the US government, the leaks made by the 30-year-old IT specialist risk allowing extremists to plot and maim unhindered. While Snowden has won sympathy internationally, Washington has cast him at best as a misguided fool, at worst as a traitorous villain in the pay of hostile powers. Whatever the validity of his actions, the scene-shifting drama has made for a riveting spectacle that observers believe will eventually end up on the big screen. The plot at times has strained credulity, but it is all real, starting with Snowden’s decision in May to abandon his pole-dancing girlfriend in Hawaii for Hong Kong and a life on the run. “Every spy novelist in the world is not writing at the moment, because they are glued to this-it is the biggest spy case there has been in decades,” Jeremy Duns, the author of three novels about a turncoat British agent in the Cold War said.
Like other observers, Duns expects a movie or book tie -in before long to explore the nuances of a stor y that seems ripped from the pages of John le Carre, dwelling on themes of moral ambiguity, conflicted loyalties and outright betrayal. Any adaptation of the Snowden saga will have to give prominent billing to the NSA, an organization so secretive that it was once dubbed “No Such Agency”. The NSA emerged from the shadows in the 1998 film “Enemy of the State”, featuring Will Smith and Gene Hackman. Well before the 9/11 attacks, it covered the encroaching reach of the surveillance machine - one that in the movie’s telling would stop at nothing, not even murder, to expand its powers and shield its secrets. In comments dismissed by his critics as paranoid ravings, Snowden on June 17 evoked the threat of the US government “murdering me”, but said his stream of revelations could not be dammed. “Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped,” he told Guardian readers, in what could pass for the tag line of a Hollywood film. Snowden has injected a twist into the traditional plot. The unglamorous IT guy, munching on pizza as he beavers away at his laptop, is now the leading man. “The geek in the van has become the Bourne,” said Duns, who has also written a history of the 1960s Soviet spy Oleg Penkovsky published this month. —AFP
ATHENS: Pakistani taxi driver Muhammad Zafeer says he has to look over his shoulder when he goes to pray in Athens, where racist attackers have targeted several of the many makeshift mosques set up in cramped garages or dingy warehouses. So Greece’s plan to build a state-funded mosque in the capital, more than a century in the making, comes as a relief, even if it will be housed in a disused naval base littered with weeds and rubble in a rundown neighborhood. “This place used to be packed but these days people are scared to even go out to pray,” said Zafeer, as Muslim men in long traditional robes and colorful caps prepared for Friday prayers behind the steel-grilled windows of a former factory. “Greece has to decide if it will be democratic or if it will go back to the Middle Ages,” he said with a shrug. Reviving the long-stalled project during Greece’s worst peacetime economic crisis has divided a country that spent four centuries under Turkish Ottoman rule, where the Orthodox Church is powerful and hostility towards immigrants is rising. Soon after the government launched a tender in May to build the mosque, the far-right Golden Dawn party, which denies accusations of links to attacks on immigrants but says it wants to “rid Greece of their stench”, pledged to “fight until the bitter end” to block the plan. One local bishop, Seraphim, was so furious he took the matter to Greece’s highest administrative court, the Council of State. A ruling is not expected for months. The mosque’s critics say Athens, kept afloat by an international bailout, cannot spare the almost one million euros it will cost given that Greece is in a sixth year of recession, with record high unemployment and sinking living standards. “There’s money to build a mosque but there’s no money for Greeks to live with dignity,” Golden Dawn, which polls show is the third most popular party in Greece, said in a statement. Protests have been gathering steam outside the planned site at the naval base in Votanikos, a rundown industrial neighborhood lined with car dealerships and factories. Led by the far-right National Front movement, flag-waving demonstrators including nuns and men in military-style shirts, chanted “If you want a mosque, build it in parliament!” at the first of the protests at the end of May. Flyers depicting a mosque in a circle with a line through it were strewn across the floor. “It’s not exactly the best time to go ahead with it right now,” said Theodore Couloumbis of the ELIAMEP foreign policy think tank. “The country has plenty of instability of its own due to the economic crisis”. RIVERS OF BLOOD In the port of Piraeus, where hundreds of Greek Orthodox faithful packed the 174-year-old Holy Trinity church to hear Bishop Seraphim deliver Sunday mass, 62-year-old retired naval captain Ioannis Kaniaros called the decision “provocative”. Seraphim, who is challenging the decision in court, says building a mosque is unconstitutional and part of a plan to “Islamize” Greece, a major gateway for Asian immigrants
trying to enter the European Union each year. “I want to emphasize that Athens is the only European capital that went through four centuries of slavery under Islam, and managed to free itself just 200 years ago by spilling rivers of blood,” he said in an interview. Greece is home to about 1 million immigrants, and groups like Golden Dawn say undocumented workers have pushed up crime and put a burden on state resources at a time of crisis. Muslim groups estimate more than 200,000 Muslims from countries including Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh live in Athens alone. Racially-motivated attacks have risen to alarming levels during the crisis, according to the United Nations’ refugee agency UNHCR, which said the authorities were doing little to tackle the problem. At least one informal mosque has been set on fire. On another, someone has scrawled profanities in black paint. “It’s very important for us that the mosque is built. We would feel like we live in a free country, we would feel safe”, said Shabaz Ahamed, a Pakistani Muslim motioning to a security monitor installed in his makeshift mosque after a group of men stormed in hurling abuse and threats a few months ago. The city, which has not had a formal mosque since Greece won independence from occupying Ottomans in 1832, has come under fire by human rights groups such as Amnesty International for being one of the few European capitals without one. Repeated plans for a post-Ottoman mosque in Athens began in earnest in 1880, with an act of parliament, but all fell through, including one timed for the 2004 Olympic Games. Reports in local media that Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan offered to fund a mosque in Athens to his Greek counterpart Antonis Samaras during talks earlier this year have also angered some Greeks, who feel a
mosque would represent a continuing Turkish presence in the country. While relations between the two neighbors have warmed and natural disasters in both countries have brought them closer, the two rivals have a history of enmity and came to the brink of war on several occasions, most recently in 1996. Local media say the new mosque, which will hold about 400 worshippers, will not have a minaret so as to blend in with the environment and not resemble a mosque, but the government has provided few details. The office of architect Alexandros Tombazis, which will design the building next to an existing chapel with a bell-tower, declined to comment, saying it has been advised by officials not to because the issue is “too sensitive”. Analysts say it could help Greece as it tries to lure foreign investment to its battered economy from cash-rich Gulf Arab states such as Qatar, which has pledged to invest up to 1 billion euros in Greek companies. “It could facilitate Arab money to enter the Greek market - especially moderate Arab,” Couloumbis said. Stavros Kalogiannis, the former deputy development minister who signed the decision to disburse the funds in May, denied there was external pressure to build the mosque and said simply that it was a project “that had matured”. The mosque’s supporters say Athens has gone too long without one and that its 1 million euro price tag is relatively small. “Athens needs a mosque because there are Muslims living here that’s why,” Athens Mayor Yiorgos Kaminis, a leftist, told Reuters, adding that Greece had to protect the right to religious freedom under its constitution. “You buy a maisonette in (the Athens suburb of ) Chalandri and it costs 500,000 euros and the country can’t afford to build a mosque?” he asked. “It’s not about money. I didn’t see us doing anything when we had money.”— Reuters
ATHENS: A cleaner walks down the stairs of a below-ground arcade in central Athens yesterday. Only one shop in the arcade remains open while the other 23 have closed, mostly during the financial crisis that has triggered store closures and a spike in violent crime. — AP
EU warns trade deal under threat over bugging claims BRUSSELS: A long-awaited trade deal between the European Union and the United States could be in jeopardy over allegations that Washington bugged EU offices, European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding warned yesterday. It is the latest spying claim attributed to fugitive intelligence analyst Edward Snowden. Revelations in Monday’s Guardian that the US also targeted the Washington embassies of France, Italy and Greece look set to further strain relations. Brussels, Paris and Berlin reacted angrily to a report in German weekly Der Spiegel on Sunday which detailed covert surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA) on EU diplomatic missions. The report was based on confidential documents, some of which it had been able to consult via Snowden. Reding warned that talks to create what would be the world’s biggest free trade area, formally launched
earlier this month, could be jeopardized if the bugging allegations proved true. “We can’t negotiate a large transatlantic market if there is any doubt that our partners are bugging the offices of European negotiators,” Reding said at a meeting in Luxembourg, her spokesperson said. “We have immediately been in contact with the US authorities in Washington DC and in Brussels and have confronted them with the press reports,” the European Commission said in a statement. The US said Sunday it would respond to the EU via diplomatic channels over the bugging allegations. “While we are not going to comment publicly on specific alleged intelligence activities, as a matter of policy we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations,” said a statement from the
office of the Director of National Intelligence in Washington. One document, dated September 2010 and classed as “strictly confidential”, describes how the NSA kept tabs on the European Union’s mission in Washington, Der Spiegel said. According to documents seen by the Guardian, bugs were implanted on the encrypted fax machine at the embassy as part of operation ‘Perdido’, set up to learn about rifts between member nations. The EU delegation at the United Nations was subject to similar surveillance, Der Spiegel said, adding that the spying also extended to the 27member bloc’s Brussels headquarters. The files also revealed that, in addition to the EU, the US embassies of France, Greece and Italy were among 38 “targets” of NSA spying operations, Monday’s Guardian reported. In the only US reaction to the Spiegel claims so far, Deputy
National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, while refusing to be drawn into commenting directly on the allegations, said Saturday it was “worth noting” the US was “very close” to EU security services. The reports are the latest in a series of allegations about US spying activity revealed by Snowden, a former NSA contractor. He is now stranded at a Moscow airport transit zone looking for a country to accept his asylum request after the United States issued a warrant for his arrest and revoked his passport. EU powerhouse Germany said the United States must quickly say whether the spying allegations were true or not. “It’s beyond our imagination that our friends in the US consider the Europeans as enemies,” Justice Minister Sabine LeutheusserSchnarrenberger said in a statement. “If the media reports are accurate, it is reminiscent of actions among enemies during the Cold War.” —AFP