Hip-hop showdown: Is the battle between Kanye West and 50 Cent just a publicity stunt?

(Photo: vibe.com)

Kanye West and 50 Cent are both best-selling rap artists - but the similarities end there. One is from the suburbs, the other from the streets. And, as they prepare to release their new albums on the same day next month, the mutual antagonism is growing. But is it all a publicity stunt?

By Jerome Taylor
Published, The Independent: 14 August 2007

50 Cent has never been a one to mince his words. Even before he was a multiplatinum-selling rap star, complete with the obligatory footwear line, sprawling mansion and autobiographical movie, the Queens-bred rapper was renowned on the underground New York scene as a man who had perfected the so-called Art of Beef.
Otherwise known as trashing a fellow artist (be it their ability to rap, wear the correct industry approved clothes or score with the opposite sex) "beefing" is practically a hip-hop rite of passage and, from the start, 50 Cent was a gifted, and somewhat foolhardy, natural.
In early 2000, while still a young rapper virtually unknown outside his small circle of local fans, 50 Cent stormed on to the New York scene with the underground track "How to Rob", a tongue-in-cheek instruction manual detailing how best to mug some of the industry's most successful stars, including Jay-Z, the Wu-Tang Clan and Nas. They responded in kind by attacking the cheeky upstart in their own tracks and the rest, as they say, is history.
As a recipe for generating publicity and notoriety beefing has worked every time for hip-hop artists, and none more so than for 50 Cent - a man with almost as many aliases as someone on the FBI's most-wanted list (Fitty and Five-0 being just two). But now the rap star has taken beefing to a whole new level by opening up a new and unusual feud with Kanye West, the only hip-hop artist who could steal his thunder, when they simultaneously release new albums on 11 September.
Hip-hop fans were stunned over the weekend when 50 Cent made the unusual announcement that he would quit rapping if West's Graduation sells more copies than his own upcoming album, Curtis. In an interview with the hip-hop website Sohh.com on Friday, 50 Cent attacked supporters of West, who is himself a highly acclaimed platinum-selling artist, but generally regarded as likely to sell fewer records next month.
"They would like to see Kanye West give me a problem because I've worked myself into a space where I've become the favourite," he said "Everybody roots against the underdog when he goes against the favourite. Put it like this, let's raise the stakes. If Kanye West sells more records than 50 Cent on September 11, I'll no longer write music. I'll write music and work with my other artists, but I won't put out any more solo albums."
Hip-hop's biggest showdown for years will pit two characters from distinctly different backgrounds and many are billing it as the music world's latest class war, the 21st-century equivalent to the Beatles v the Rolling Stones, or Blur against Oasis.
On one side is 50 Cent, a multi-platinum artist who survived on the streets of New York by dealing crack cocaine at the age of 12 and whose music praises the thuggish urban gang culture into which he was born. On the other is West, the critically acclaimed, born-again Christian from middle-class Chicago suburbia who fought off the macho gang culture surrounding hip-hop to revolutionise the way people listen to rap.
Since the announcement, websites and blogs across cyberspace have been packed with fans debating which of the two mega-stars will outsell the other, and whether 50 Cent would actually stick to his promise to quit rapping if West wins.
The simultaneous release of new albums from two of the rap world's best-selling and most talented artists was already being hailed as the mother of all contemporary music battles. But the New Yorker's vow to turn his back on what he does best has raised the stakes to a whole new level.
When 50 Cent and Kanye West released their debut albums in 2003 and 2004 respectively, both critics and fans lauded what was then a much-needed fresh input of raw talent into the increasingly staid US hip-hop scene.
The former's album, Get Rich or Die Tryin', became the fastest selling solo album in US history, shifting 872,000 copies in the first four days of its release. Alongside his second offering, The Massacre, he has since gone on to become one of the world's best selling hip-hop artists, shifting nearly 20 million records worldwide.
West's triple-platinum 2004 debut, The College Dropout, meanwhile, stunned critics and fans for its sheer originality, topping all the major critics' polls and earning 10 Grammy nominations. His second release, Late Registration, sold 600,000 copies in the first week alone and picked up a further three Grammys.
The perception that West is the critically acclaimed rap revolutionary while his rival simply sells lots of records appears to have been the major impetus behind 50 Cent's latest attack. "The people who give out trophies, pick [Kanye] because he's safe," he said. "But my projects have been making a way bigger impression ... by actually selling. That's an indication of the public's interest.
"How many people are interested enough to go spend $16 (£8) on a CD? I sold 1.1. million records in four days and I didn't get one trophy for The Massacre, for the entire album, then release Get Rich Or Die Tryin' as a soundtrack, sell 3 million records of the soundtrack and soundtracks are harder to sell than solo albums ... and then, no trophies for the soundtracks. I don't get trophies, I get cheques, he gets the trophies. But how you gon' give him a trophy now when he comes out the same time I come out? And I'm just all over his ass. You gon' clearly see the favouritism. He's gonna still get the trophies."
But is 50 Cent's animosity for real, or was his announcement a cleverly crafted media stunt to garner as much publicity in time for the release of his new album? After all, both artists were very much spotted and supported by the same people who helped launch both their careers.
"There's a lot of clever PR going on here," says Hatie Collins, the editor of NWD magazine, one of the UK's best-selling hip-hop publications. "It's a tradition in hip-hop that if you want to sell a new album then you come out and take a pop at another artist. Kanye and Fitty are friends, I think Kanye's even got a track coming out on 50's upcoming album."
Apart from their single-parent backgrounds and long struggle to get into the industry, 50 Cent and West have very little in common. The early life of Curtis James Jackson III, the man who would later be known as 50 Cent, was virtually a blueprint for the endemic violence that has plagued America's inner-city poor for decades.
Forced on to the streets after his drug dealer mother was murdered when he was aged just eight, 50 Cent quickly learnt that the only way to get out of the urban poverty he had been born into was to make money, fast. (His stage name, 50 Cent, is a reference to the way the star survived the streets of New York through providing for himself "by any means"). The quickest way to make cash in the drug-infested inner suburbs of 1980s New York was to sell crack cocaine. At the age of 12 he became a dealer.
While 50 Cent was dodging rival dealers and police officers as a teenager, Kanye Omari West was attending the Polaris High School in Oak Lawn, Illinois. His mother, a teacher, had moved there after divorcing the singer's father, a former Black Panther, and the young singer enjoyed the type of American suburban idyll that his rival could perhaps have only dreamed of.
After dropping out of art college, West looked to a career in hip-hop and soon found himself producing tracks for top artists such as Jay-Z, The Game and Alicia Keys. But while Kanye's middle-class background allowed him to jump into the hip-hop scene as a producer, many felt he would be hard pressed to gain the legitimacy needed to be a rapper on stage in an industry that lionised gang culture and violence.
Both 50 Cent and West, for instance, cite near-death experiences as events that forced them to turn their lives around, but whereas Kanye's was a near- fatal car crash, the way 50 Cent cheated death was by miraculously surviving being shot nine times at point-blank range. In the world of hip-hop, being shot is simply sexier than crashing a car.
"We all grew up street guys who had to do whatever we had to do to get by," said Jay-Z in an interview with Time magazine in 2005. "Then there's Kanye, who to my knowledge has never hustled a day in his life."
But then fans of West's music and style would say that the rap star had never been about hustling in the first place. In contrast to most of his contemporaries, West has resolutely distanced himself from the violence, misogyny and homophobia that is often endemic in modern popular hip-hop. Where 50 Cent's lyrics largely revolve around the hip-hop mainstays of guns, sex and drugs, West brought criticism and scepticism to his own industry and culture.
"Kanye never really tried to be a gangster," says Hattie Collins. "He always questioned why anyone would want to be part of that ethos. When he came on to the scene you knew it was hip-hop, but with lyrics that were different and original."
On the upcoming showdown between their two albums, West has remained noticeably non-combative. His only comment so far has been deliberately conciliatory, simply stating: "When my album drops and 50's drops, you're gonna get a lot of good music at the same time."
But in an industry where feuds have often spilled out into open warfare between rival rap stars, is it not a little dangerous to start a rivalry between two of the hottest properties on the hip-hop scene at the moment? "Feuds are simply a great way to generate publicity," says Collins. "I admit they can get a little sinister when it comes to hip-hop, but with 50 and Kanye its pretty much a clever PR stunt dreamed up by the record labels."
But whether the rivalry is real or not, bosses at both the artists' record labels will undoubtedly be licking their lips at the prospect of a showdown between the two people that have arguably done more to revolutionise hip-hop music and widen its appeal in the past five years than any of their other contemporaries. And suggestions that the feud is class based will only help grease the already well-oiled publicity machine.

http://arts.independent.co.uk/music/news/article2861743.ece

The miracle of Rwanda: How one refugee's remarkable story is being told on the Edinburgh stage

Immaculée Ilibagiza is a latter-day Anne Frank. The daughter of two devout Catholic Tutsis, she was a prime target for the Hutu death squads who brought their genocidal terror to the African country in 1994. She survived, hidden for three months in the sweltering heat of a tiny bathroom. Now her remarkable story is being told on the Edinburgh stage.

By Jerome Taylor
Published,The Independent: 11 August 2007

The man who came closest to killing Immaculée Ilibagiza never knew how near he had got to his prey. He was a machete-wielding member of the Interahamwe, the Hutu death squads that prowled the length and breadth of Rwanda during the country's brutal genocide looking for what they called "cockroaches", those members of the Tutsi tribe they had sworn to destroy.
Ms Ilibagiza was in hiding. For 91 days she and seven other Tutsi women were crammed into a stiflingly hot bathroom as the orgy of looting, rape and murder that swept through the country in 1994 raged outside. Ms Ilibagiza, the daughter of two prominent Catholic Tutsi teachers, was a prized target. As they teetered on the edge of destruction the only thing stopping their would-be killers from finding the women was a single wardrobe that had been placed over the door to the toilet.
"I heard a guy saying he'd already killed 499 Tutsis and that he was determined to make me the 500th," says Ms Ilibagiza, now 37. She has since moved to New York and has two of her own children. "He was standing just behind the door when he said it. These people were our neighbours, people who just weeks earlier used to be our friends. "
Her story, simultaneously harrowing and uplifting, is the Rwandan equivalent of The Diary of Anne Frank - a remarkable account of how, against all odds, people can survive in the most inhumane conditions as the violence of man crashes down around them and how, through forgiveness, even the most horrendous experiences can lead to redemption.
But unlike the young German-Jewish author, who was eventually found by the Nazis and died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp just weeks before its liberation, Ms Ilibagiza lived to tell her tale. Her book, Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust, has gone on to sell more than 250,000 copies around the world and she is feted by world leaders, church groups and charities as a highly inspirational speaker. But what makes Ms Ilibagiza's experience truly stand out, as terrifying and anguished as it is, is the way she has learnt to forgive the people that destroyed her family and country.
Now the story of her agonising three months in hiding has been turned into a one-woman play and this week it is showing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival as part of a world tour.
For 100 deadly days in the spring of 1994, Rwanda experienced a genocide of near unimaginable savagery. Anyone who knew the country at the time said the outbreak of violence was predictable - Hutus and Tutsis had had a long history of enmity and warring - but very few were prepared for the sheer level of barbarity reached.
On 6 April 1994, three days after Immaculée and her family had celebrated Easter together in their ancestral village of Mataba, an aeroplane carrying Rwanda's Hutu President, Juvénal Habyarimana, was shot down. Habyarimana had incensed Hutu extremists by ending a long civil war with the Tutsis and his death gave them a pretext for starting a highly organised, systematic campaign to rid their country's minority Tutsis.
"Within 10 minutes [of Habyarimana's death] the whole country changed," recalls Ms Ilibagiza. "Everyone hid in their houses just listening to the radio."
The violence began almost immediately. The international community looked away as the 10 Belgian peacekeepers that had been assigned to watch over Rwanda were shot dead and then turned its back as more than one million Tutsis and pro-Tutsi Hutus were exterminated. Men were usually hacked to death with a machete. For women, the method was most often gang rape and then the machete.
A more brutal realisation of the evil that men do could hardly be imagined but, as with many of humanity's darkest chapters, the Rwandan genocide also produced extraordinary tales of individual heroism and survival.
It was not long before Mataba, an ethnically mixed village in the western district of Kiyube, found itself caught up in the maelstrom. Fearing that his daughter would be raped if caught by Hutu militiamen, Ms Ilibagiza's father sent her to hide in a nearby house owned by the Rev Simeon Nzabahimana who, despite being a Hutu, risked his life to hide her and seven other women.
So secret was the women's hiding place that the priest's family were not even told about it in case they were threatened or tempted into revealing its whereabouts.
"It was a room measuring three feet by four feet, a small bathroom really," says Ms Ilibagiza. "It didn't even have a sink, just a toilet sunk into the ground. There was a door on to the next room and at night we could sometimes go there to lie down. But only at night." For the next three months the women sat in terror as the Interahamwe went from house to house butchering Mataba's Tutsi population. They could hear the screams of their relatives as the men were cut down and the women raped before being butchered.
Ms Ilibagiza's father had already survived two civil wars and believed he could try and reason with the Interahamwe. Witnesses say he was shot dead by a man called Felicien before he could even open his mouth. The same man then went on to slaughter her mother, Rose, and her elder brother, Damascene. A second brother was also cut down sometime later. The only immediate relative of Ms Ilibagiza to survive the genocide other than herself was her third brother, Aimable, who fortunate enough to be studying in Senegal at the time of the genocide. He has chosen to remain in his country of birth and works as a vet.
Convinced they would never see their families again, waiting for the death squads to storm into the filthy white tiled room at any moment, the women sat for days on end in total silence, only daring to communicate by sign language. At 5ft 9in Ms Ilibagiza was one of the tallest and within days her body was covered in sores from being unable to move properly.
Privacy and cleanliness were forgotten. The toilet could only be flushed when the neighbour next door did so and there was rarely enough paper for the women's menstrual periods. After a week lice were crawling in their clothes and hair.
Despite the crippling pain of being largely unable to move, Ms Ilibagiza says the women stoically accepted their lot. "When you realise that someone is next door waiting to kill you, you can do anything," she remembers. "You can put up with any hardship. We never complained."
Initially, as the violence raged around her, so to did Ms Ilibagiza's heart. She admits that in the first few weeks of her captivity it was difficult to feel anything but hate for the people who had killed her family and destroyed her life. As desperation set in she turned to her rosary, the last thing her father had given her before she went into hiding, and prayed to God. Inside her prison, surrounded by squalor, misery and mourning, Ms Ilibagiza decided to forgive the people who had murdered her family.
"The day I truly understood what forgiveness meant was while I was hiding in that room," she says. "It was like a light turning on in my mind and I made a choice. If I gave up on humanity I would die inside. I'd no longer be able to trust anybody.
"I kept thinking of Christ on the cross and his words, 'Forgive them father they know not what they do'. I knew there was no way my family's killers could understand the magnitude of what they were doing."
By the time the women left their hiding place and made it to a refugee camp that was run by French peacekeepers, Ms Ilibagiza's weight had plummeted from 8 stone 3 pounds to just 4 stone 9 pounds. Mr Nzabahimana, the man who had hidden them, was killed during the dying days of the genocide for sheltering Tutsis.
By late summer the killing had finally died down and Ms Ilibagiza decided to test how far her forgiveness could go. She found her father's killer in a nearby prison. The tables had been turned. Now he was imprisoned, filthy and terrified but the first words he heard from the woman who had come to see him were: "I forgive you."
"He couldn't look at me, he looked down and was so ashamed," said Ms Ilibagiza. "Something changed in his heart. I hope it's made him realise the gravity of what he's done. Like me he had a beautiful family and home but one day he decided to go out and kill."
This ability to forgive such atrocities was what inspired Leslie Lewis Sword, an American actress who came to know Ms Ilibagiza after attending one of her lectures, to dramatise her life. "Her message is forgiveness," Sword said earlier this week. "She has found a way to move on after these unbearable hardships. It gives hope for Darfur, for Zimbabwe too. People are taking a look at these things too and asking what is happening there."
The play itself, Miracle in Rwanda, in which Sword plays all the parts including Ms Ilibagiza, her family and an Interahamwe leader, has received lavish praise in the US press and is currently making a world tour. Her performances at Edinburgh have sold out each night.
Ms Ilibagiza, meanwhile, hopes her fellow Rwandans will follow her approach and look towards reconciling their differences rather than look for retribution. "The happiness you get from being able to forgive someone is beyond any apology," she says. "I think Rwanda will recover. It could take hundreds of years but it will recover."

http://arts.independent.co.uk/theatre/features/article2853824.ece

Mining giant faces tribal protest

By Jerome Taylor

Published, The Independent: 06 August 2007

Until he came to London Kumti Majhi had never worn shoes before - he had never needed to. A member of the Dongria Kondh, one of India's most traditional tribes from the forested hills in the state of Orissa, he had never had any need to put any protection on his feet.
But the tribal leader knew shoes would be needed if he was to try to halt the construction of a £400m bauxite mine on the Niyamgiri Mountain, the Dongria Kondh's homeland and a hill they worship as their god.
Since building of the mine and its adjacent alumina refinery first began in 2004 by the UK-based mining giant Vedanta Resources, a battle has raged between the FTSE-100 company on one side and environmentalists and tribal members on the other who say the mine has already caused untold misery and is an ecological disaster waiting to happen.
Last week Kumti Majhi travelled from his village to the annual general meeting of Vedanta Resources to inform shareholders of the fate of his people. Although reporters were banned from attending the AGM, The Independent spoke to Mr Majhi outside the Mayfair conference centre.
"Niyamgiri Mountain is a living god for us," said the father of four who until now had never left the state of Orissa. "It has provided us with food, water and our livelihoods for generations. Even if we have to die protecting our god we will not hesitate, we will not let it go."
On Thursday critics of the mine will finally find out whether their three-year campaign has been successful when the Indian Supreme Court sits to rule on the construction's legality. Three petitioners have brought cases against Vedanta in what could be a landmark ruling .
A Supreme Court committee has already accused Vedanta of "blatant violation" of planning and environmental guidelines. A separate report from the Wildlife Institute of India also criticised the project citing its "irreversible" impact on the environment.
Activists say the project is a threat to the environment and to the distinct culture and practices of the three Kondh tribes that for centuries have had a symbiotic relationship with their sacred mountain, foraging and hunting in some areas and eschewing other areas out of respect.
Vedanta rejected accusations that the rehabilitation of families was unsuitable and strongly defended its environmental record saying the company had abided by all environmental regulations.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2838655.ece

Shambo's Last Stand

By Jerome Taylor

Published: The Independent, 27 July 2007

To members of his Hindu community, he is touched by the divine. To Defra, he is a health threat - and last night, he was heading for the slaughterhouse.

The veterinary inspector first came for Shambo at 8.50am yesterday, 50 minutes late. After three months of legal wrangling and contradictory court rulings that seemed to swing between saving the six-year-old Friesian bull's life and condemning it to death, the Government had finally arrived take to the animal to the slaughterhouse.
As promised, the monks and nuns of Skanda Vale, a small predominantly Hindu community nestled deep in the heart of rural Carmarthenshire where Shambo has lived since his birth, were waiting for them.
When the veterinary inspector, Wyn Buick, acting on behalf of the Welsh Assembly, asked the monks to hand over the beloved bull they had sworn to protect, they refused. The inspector and entourage retreated. But late yesterday afternoon they returned, armed with a fresh warrant and backed up by more than 30 officers.
Shambo's temple was surrounded by those who had gathered to worship, but any earlier hesitation that the police might have shown disappeared as they began removing the pilgrims one by one as carefully and as sensitively as possible. True to their Gandhian principles, the devotees put up no resistance and let themselves be removed.
After the cage had been sliced through, Shambo was brought out at 7.30pm and taken away in a silver trailer. There was no confirmation from the Welsh Assembly when he would be slaughtered.
Ever since Shambo first tested positive for exposure to bovine tuberculosis on 27 April, a battle has raged between the Welsh Assembly-whose policy it is to slaughter cattle that test positive for TB - and the temple community who believe Shambo to be an embodiment of the divine. The bull, say the monks, should only have met his end when God, and not a vet, decided so.
For the authorities and police, simply getting close to Shambo was always going to be problematic. The 20 monks and five nuns who preside over the temple cer-emonies, known as poojas, vowed to do everything they could to stop the authorities getting near Sham-bo, who had been isolated from the rest of the herd in the entrance to the main temple since his test.
When the community heard of the government's intention to slaughter the bull after their last appeal was rejected by the High Court on Monday, they called on Hindus and fellow supporters to come to Skanda Vale and vowed non-violently to obstruct the authorities from getting their hands on the bull. The method they had chosen was to hold a sacred vigil directly outside Shambo's enclosure, which they said would continue for as long as it took. Any attempt to seize the bull, they said, would desecrate a holy ceremony.
By Tuesday night, a small but dedicated group of pilgrims had already found its way to the isolated 115-acre farm where the temple is built.
As dawn broke yesterday over the thickly forested vale many more devotees, supporters and curious visitors had arrived. By 5am the first of the day's devotional sanskrit chants were echoing through the heavily incensed air. Brother Michael, a slim bespectacled monk who leads the temple, stood up to address the congregation for one final morale-rousing speech.
"We have fought for many months to save Shambo's life,'' he said. "Our lives are about worshipping and serving God, not about killing. We cannot allow the Government to desecrate this temple and take a sacred life."
After finishing the first pooja of the day inside the main temple building, more than 100 devotees moved their ceremonies outside to Shambo's cage. Shambo stood munching on bales of hay, oblivious to his impending fate and the furore surrounding his existence. Supporters said yesterday that the timing of the operation to slaughter Shambo was particularly insensitive because it coincided with the temple's largest annual festival, a two-week devotion to the main presiding deity, Subramanium.
Also more commonly known as Lord Muragan and the Son of Shiva, Hindus believe he is the destroyer of negativity, a weapon against the forces of violence and destruction which the devotees have come to refer to as the Welsh Assembly.
Brother Francis, 38, who became a monk 15 years ago, said: "It's bad enough that they've come to take Shambo but to come during the middle of our most important festival is horrendously insensitive. Despite what the Government says, when it comes to Shambo there was simply no other way that we could have acted. The sanctity of life is absolute.''
Those who wanted to protect Shambo from the abattoir yesterday rejected any criticism that the temple authorities were unreasonable in their dealing with the assembly's concerns over public health.
Brother Michael said: "We tried to explore every avenue to resolve the Government's concern and instead we came up against bureaucratic intransigence at its worst. The test they use to identify TB is not conclusive. It doesn't show whether Shambo has actually been infected, it just shows he's been exposed to the TB bacteria. We suggested further blood tests - we even offered to pay the £30 it costs - but they simply kept saying, 'It's not our policy'."
Throughout its dispute with the temple, the assembly had argued that Shambo could infect other animals if he continued to live. The temple, meanwhile, insisted that since the young bull was isolated and had only tested positive to exposure to TB bacteria he posed no risk.
Even though Skanda Vale finally lost its legal battle in court, the judge nonetheless ordered the Welsh Assembly to pay the temple's legal costs. The final bill-including the costs of killing Shambo-which ultimately will be footed by the taxpayer, looks set to run into the hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Sister Carol, one of five women to have taken the Franciscan vows of celibacy, poverty and obedience that makes a Skanda Vale devotee a monk or nun, was critical of the money she believed had been wasted by the government fighting over Shambo. "They never wanted to negotiate from the beginning,'' she said. "But what exactly have they managed to achieve? Ultimately it's cost them almost a quarter of a million pounds to kill a bull.''
The loss of Shambo is the second significant blow to the Skanda Vale community this year. Earlier this month, as the fight over Shambo first went to court, the temple's founder, a man known to his followers as Guru Sri Subramanium, died. He had been ill for some time and had been staying in the hospice the temple provides for followers and locals. Brother Francis said: "To lose our guru at such a key time was a big blow. But we still feel his presence.''
Born in 1920 to a wealthy Sri Lankan family, Guru Subramanium moved to Europe shortly after the Second World War. His followers say he was so horrified by the violence unleashed in the name of religion and ideology he decided to create a temple somewhere in Europe that would unify the Western world's faiths with those further east.
Ten years of doing menial jobs in London including - according to his "official'' biography - stints as a flower seller, nightclub singer and a job on the shop floor of Selfridges, Guru Subramanium had finally collected enough cash to found his first temple, which he did so in London. It was free to everyone and open to all faiths.
In 1973 his group bought a small, rundown farmhouse in Carmarthenshire with 115 acres and began building the Skanda Vale temple. For more than 30 years, deep in the heart of Western Wales, a small but dedicated group of largely Western-born men and women have chosen to forego their societies' material-ism in favour of a life of poverty, chastity and worship. Despite Skanda Vale's isolated location-it lies four miles up a potholed track and mobile phone reception is non-existent-more than 60,000 pilgrims make their way to the temple each year.
Although the gods worshipped there and the form that worship takes is noticeably Hindu, like the first temple in London Skanda Vale is non-denominational.
It is one of the few places in the world where the priests administering pooja are predominantly white. Yesterday's crowd were a typically eclectic collection of believers. Swiss Hindu converts sat next to Asian Hindus from London, who sat singing next to local Christians.
Delyth Howells, who described herself as a Christian but one that had "learned more about Christ in Skanda Vale than from anything taught in church", said she had been visiting the temple for more than 20 years. "The Government have handled this with total disregard for the way things are done here,'' she said. "I know what's right and wrong and this is wrong. A life is a life.''
Linda Salzmann, a Swiss national who arrived two days ago with her husband and five-year-old daughter Celina, was one of the few devotees to express any sympathy for the authorities.
"I can understand the Government's position," she said. "They can't go back. But it must be a difficult decision for them."
Shortly before the police arrived, Brother Michael read out an email from a cow sanctuary in Maharashtra: "A number of cow sanctuaries in India have said they were willing to take Shambo and shipping had been arranged,'' he said. "But the Welsh Assembly refused the plan."
Although Skanda Vale has received some messages of support from the rural community - many of whom have watched their cattle be slaughtered because of TB - farmers unions have been critical of the way the temple refused to let Shambo be slaughtered. If the policy was that their cows were slaughtered because of TB, they argued, Shambo should be no different.
As night fell on Skanda Vale a few diehards were still chanting Vedic mantras but most hung outside the empty cage. Many were in tears. "It really saddens me that animal life is so worthless here," said one Buddhist devotee who did not want to be named. "But sometimes having faith and conviction can be hard. God moves in mysterious ways.'' Three other members of the temple's herd of cattle are showing signs of exposure to the TB bacteria. Whether the Welsh Assembly will have the stomach for another fight like yesterday's remains to be seen.

news.independent.co.uk/health/article2809195.ece

Unveiled: The Pakistani tribe that dares to defy the fundamentalists

(PHOTO: Jerome Taylor)

Published, The Independent: 18 July 2007

In the North West Frontier Province, the mullahs' word is law and the veil is worn. But one ancient tribe refuses to cover up. Jerome Taylor reports from the Rumbur Valley

In Pakistan's deeply conservative North West Frontier Province, the veil is simply a way of life. Whether in the bazaars of the capital Peshawar or high up in the myriad of Himalayan villages bordering Afghanistan, women wishing to leave their houses do so under the cover of a niqab or a billowing burqa. So important is the Islamic concept of purdah that the fort-like houses in the tribal areas usually contain separate living quarters for women and men.
Give or take the occasional advertising hoarding or glitzy film from Lahore, most men are unlikely to see an adult female face outside of their immediate family until they marry.
But in the remote Chitral region nestled high in the Hindu Kush mountain range are the last remnants of a tribe where the women walk unveiled in bright red and black dresses. Lavishly decorated with orange bead necklaces and colourful hats made from cowrie shells, they dance in public and are often free to marry and take lovers. They are the Kalasha, one of Pakistan's only remaining indigenous non-Muslim communities and a remarkable living throwback to a pre-Islamic era.
Yet according to the Kalasha themselves, their unique way of life is under attack like never before. Thanks to rising extremism among a small minority of Pakistanis and the growing appeal of populist orthodox mullahs who espouse sharia law and Taliban-like austerity, the Kalasha are increasingly in the firing line.
"We've always been called kafirs (infidels) but most people simply left us alone," says Azam Kalash, one of the few members of his 3,500-strong community who managed to go to university and now campaigns for his tribe's welfare. "Now we are deemed enemy number one. Particularly after September 11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the missionaries and mullahs are determined to see us wiped out."
Isolated from the outside world by the remoteness of their valleys and the heavy Himalayan snows that block the mountain passes in winter, the Kalash somehow managed to survive successive waves of Muslim invaders and missionaries that pushed back the pre-Islamic Hindu, Buddhist and pagan tribes who once filled the fertile plains of the Indus valley.
Until last century, very few outsiders had ever made it as far as the three valleys of Rumbur, Bumboret and Birir where the Kalasha now live. Even today the valleys are only accessible by 4x4 along a tortuous road perilously carved into the shifting mountain side. But 20 years ago, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the rise of the religious mujahedin, things began to change.
"For a long time the Kalasha lived in total isolation," says Cecil Chaudhury, General Secretary of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance. "I remember going there in the 1950s with a mountaineering expedition and they were blissfully happy living in their own distinct social system. But with the mujahedin came the missionaries and the Kalasha were always going to be an easy group to target. Now the extremists are back."
Although the fighters have largely disappeared from the Chitral region, the Kalasha are now outnumbered in their own villages by converts and outsiders. During the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the notoriously brutal Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar used the valley as his hideout and many believe he has returned to the region to continue his fight against Nato forces and the Afghan government.
After a 10-year lull, the missionaries are returning and many fear that if orthodox preachers, such as those who, until recently, ran Islamabad's Red Mosque, continue to increase their appeal, the country's last non-Muslim tribe may sink into oblivion.
No Kalasha would mean no Zonor Bibi. The mother of five sits on the front porch of her mud-walled house perched high above the swollen glacial river that roars through the heart of her village. It is harvest time and apricots lie drying in the summer sun eyed by her eight-year-old daughter Walena.
Zonor's husband has just set off on the daily three-hour walk to the grazing meadows that lie high above the village but that does not stop Zonor from welcoming outsiders with open arms, an act that would be unthinkable to her Muslim neighbours.
Deeply proud of her culture, she bursts into laughter when asked how long it takes to make the iconic cowrie shell hats that all Kalasha women wear.
"They take us months," she says. "It is important to continue our traditions so not to anger our spirits and god."
Kalasha believe that failure to practice their ancient traditions has profound religious implications and can bring disaster on the village which may explain why their dress and distinct practices have managed to survive against such odds.
The role of women in Kalash society is perhaps the most obvious aspect that separates their culture from their Muslim neighbours. Where Muslim women in the region generally remain indoors or hidden from public view, their Kalash counterparts are conspicuous in the fields working alongside their men. During the festivals that celebrate the various summer harvests and preparations for winter, it is not unusual to find Kalasha women drinking apricot wine and dancing in public with males that are neither their husband nor family. Although some marriages are arranged by families, it is perfectly acceptable for Kalasha women to choose their husbands. If they are treated unkindly during the marriage the women are expected to leave the house and take a lover.
Such comparative sexual and social freedom has led to the false but commonly held perception among many lowland Pakistanis that the tribe's women are sexually promiscuous. But while Kalasha men do seem to extend a greater level of physical and social freedom to their other halves, the lives of their women-folk are still strictly regimented.
To the Kalash the world is divided into two states, onjesta (pure, sacred) and pragata (impure, profane). Women are considered pragata, particularly during menstruation and childbirth where they are exiled to special huts away from the village. Only once they have purified themselves can they return to the tribe. Certain fields and shrines considered pure and sacred to the community are also out of bounds for the tribe's women.
Such peculiarly distinct customs have fascinated anthropologists, linguists and travellers alike for centuries, not just because the survival of the Kalasha in a sea of Islam is so unusual but because no one is sure exactly where they came from.
Their tongue, like many of the dialects spoken in the Hindu Kush range, is closest to the Dardic branch of the Indo-European languages of Central Asia. But Kalash oral history tells a different story, that they are descended from Shalak Shah, one of Alexander the Great's generals whose armies conquered as far as the Indus river before turning back towards Europe. Although blond hair and blue eyes are common amongst the Kalash, recent genetic testing has suggested that they may be an aboriginal group that are, in fact, indigenous to the area.
But how did the Kalasha manage to cling on to their distinct polytheistic pagan traditions in an area renowned for its particularly orthodox brand of Islam?
"I think they were just lucky," says Siraj Ul Mulk, a direct descendant of the Sunni Muslim royal family that once ruled the Chitral region until they ceded to Pakistan in the 1960s.
"Despite their orthodox appearance, Chitralis have always been very relaxed about the Kalasha and other minorities. The missionaries always tend to come from outside." Walking through the dusty fort that his father, the Mehtar of Chitral, once used as his summer palace, Mr Ul Mulk also offers another explanation for why the Kalasha of Pakistan remained unharmed: India's partition. "Under British partition we were lucky enough to be placed on the Pakistani side," he says. "If we'd ended up in Afghanistan I doubt the Kalasha would have survived."
Two hundred years ago Afghanistan was also home to numerous Kalasha tribes, known locally as the Red Kafirs, but they were annihilated at the end of the 19th century. After receiving a bloody nose in two disastrous conflicts with the Afghans, the British simply stood by as the founding father of modern Afghanistan, Abdur Rahman Khan, systematically forced the non-Muslim tribes in the east of the country to convert at the point of a sword. A small number of Afghan Kalasha managed to flee towards Chitral and can still be seen in the upper valleys wearing their distinctive red dresses but all Kalasha are fully aware of the threat that extremist beliefs pose to their very survival.
That the Kalash are frightened of the current climate in Pakistan is testament to how seriously they take the current threats. They survived the marauding armies of Tamerlaine, the religious zeal of Abdur Rahman and even the anti-Soviet mujahedin. But now, like many of Pakistan's religious and ethnic minorities, they once again feel unprotected and vulnerable.
"We've survived so much over the years and we're not about to give up now," says Azam Kalash. "For centuries we have lived happily alongside our Muslim neighbours but thanks to extremism our numbers are dwindling. Whether we'll survive this century I simply don't know."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2779426.ece

Love that can be lethal: Muslim couples in fear of 'honour' killing

(Photo for illustrative purposes only)

By Jerome Taylor
Published: The Independent, 29 June 2007

Rebin and Khaleda never thought falling in love would force them into a life of hiding. At first glance, their London flat looks like the home of any other newlyweds. By the front door, five pairs of his-and-her shoes are lined up in a row and the kitchen fridge is plastered in little heart shaped magnets and private notes.
But for the 25-year-olds, this small and cramped one-bedroom apartment is the only place where they feel safe. Two years ago, they were forced to go on the run after gun-wielding members of Khaleda's family threatened to kill them.
For dozens of couples in the UK, such threats have become all too real. Police are now investigating more than 120 deaths they suspect of being "honour killings". It has been estimated that 12 women a year die in the UK as a result of such terrifying acts.
The supposed "honour" comes from the claim among killers that they are protecting their family's reputation. Yet for those whose only crime was to fall in love there seems little honourable about the threats being made against them.
The full horror of these killings was highlighted earlier this month when the father and uncle of Banaz Mahmod, a Kurdish woman from south London, were convicted of murdering her.
Like Banaz Mahmod, Khaleda fell for someone that members of her family did not approve of. Khaleda was born in the West Midlands to conservative south Asian parents who wanted her to marry a distant cousin from her ancestral village. Instead, she fell for the boy next door.
Their forbidden love first sprang from fleeting glimpses through the kitchen window. "The first time I saw her she instantly grabbed my attention," Rebin, 22, said. "I thought she was the most beautiful person in the world, so calm and innocent."
As a teenager, Rebin had fled Saddam Hussein's persecution of the Kurds and had moved into the West Midlands street Khaleda had grown up on. Eventually, he plucked up the courage to talk to the shy but alluring girl next door.
Desperately in love, the couple were shattered when Khaleda's parents flew her cousin to the UK to organise her marriage to him. As the cousin moved into her room and began the negotiations, Khaleda and Rebin simply eloped and married.
Any notion a compromise could be reached was dispelled when more than 20 of Khaleda's family and relatives arrived at Rebin's father's house brandishing knives, machetes and guns.
Those most keen to kill Khaleda and Rebin were not the older first generation family members who had been born and brought up in south Asia, but her brothers and cousins - young men who had lived their whole lives in the UK. According to the UN, at least 5,000 women a year are killed worldwide by their relatives in such killings. There have been more than 5,000 documented cases in Pakistan in the past five years alone.
Khaleda is mortified that anyone might believe Islam justifies honour killings. "It has nothing to do with Islam," she said. "In the Koran it says a Muslim girl can marry anyone as long as they are also a Muslim and it clearly states she has the right to say no. They make you believe it's justified by religion but it's not, it's cultural. Either way, I think forcing a girl to marry someone they don't love it's like raping your own daughter."
Had it not been for the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation, a charity that helped them relocate, Rebin and Khaleda could have ended up like Banaz Mahmod. She had fled an abusive two-year marriage and warned police of the danger she was in. But still she died.
Horrified by the number of killings taking place in Britain, Diana Nammi set up the charity in 2002. "Since we started, we have been able to save at least 50 women's lives," said Ms Nammi, in her east London office. "We have even saved two men." As Rebin knows, men's lives are in danger too. A year after fleeing, Rebin and his wife are safe but the pressures of living in hiding are immense.
The threats have become more severe. One day, Rebin received a phone call from one of Khaleda's cousins.
"He said he was holding a gun to my friend's head and if I didn't send Khaleda back he'd shoot him."
Khaleda is still too scared to leave the house and Rebin, who gets by working 60 hours a week as a driver, says he is always looking over his shoulder.
But they are convinced they did the right thing. "We fell in love," said Rebin. "It's a beautiful thing and we shouldn't be ashamed of it. How any parent can believe love is a shameful thing I will never understand."

ANALYSIS: 'Training is needed to recognise dangers'

By Diana Nammi, founder of the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation.

When Khaleda and Rebin came to me last year their story was one I had heard numerous times before. As a Kurdish woman from Iran, I had grown up in a country where women were made victims both by their own family and through their government's perceptions of honour.
In Kurdistan a woman could be killed or executed for simple "crimes" such as wearing make-up, rejecting an arranged marriage, dressing inappropriately, seeking divorce or being in love. Little did I know that when I came to Britain, a place where women's basic rights are supposedly respected and guaranteed, some women would still be at risk of death for bringing "shame" on their families.
In 2002 I set up the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation (IKWRO), a charity that helped Kurdish, Farsi and Arabic-speaking women in London to find the protection they desperately needed. At the time, honour killings were usually treated as nothing more than domestic murders and were simply not dealt with properly. Not wanting to appear culturally insensitive or - worse - racist, the police tended not to realise how much danger some of these women were in.
Then, two months after we set up IKWRO, Heshu Yones was murdered by her own father. A bright and beautiful teenager, Heshu's "crime" was to have fallen in love with a Lebanese boy. Her father, Abdulla, stabbed her 17 times and then slit her throat, all in the name of regaining his "honour". The judge sentenced Abdulla to just 14 years in prison, arguing that the lenient sentence should take into account his cultural background.
Heshu's murder should have forced the police and the Government to confront the fact that honour killings were not just incidences of domestic violence but a deeply serious and organised crime that could not be excused regardless of cultural sensitivities. They promised to learn from her death, increase training for police officers dealing with these crimes and thankfully began re-examining more than 100 murders that may have been honour killings.
But I am yet to be convinced that the police have learnt. Last month, the father and uncle of another Kurdish girl, Banaz Mahmod, were found guilty of her murder. Banaz had gone to the police for help four times but was turned away.
Honour killings do happen in Britain and whether we like it or not we must stop them. Care workers, teachers, GPs, hospitals, welfare officers should all be trained to recognised when someone is in danger of becoming a victim of an honour killing and help them. Rebin and Khaleda were lucky. They have been able to start their lives again. But they will always be looking over their shoulders.
Diana Nammi is the coordinator of the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation: 020 7490 0303.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2720096.ece

Born in Korean gulag, punished for no crime

(PHOTOS: Jerome Taylor)

By Jerome Taylor

Published: The Independent, 20 June 2007

For the first 22 years of his life Shin Dong Hyok's home address was Political Prison Camp No 14, Gaechon County, South Pyeongan Province, North Korea.

He grew up in unimaginable hardship in one of North Korea's kwanli-so, the gulag system built by Kim Il Sung in 1972 to work prisoners until they died.

His "crime" was to have been born to parents cate-gorised by the regime as from the "hostile classes" - the 27 per cent of the population considered national enemies, impure elements and reactionaries. Under Kim Jong Il's "three generation" policy, the family members of anyone who commits a political crime are punished alongside the perpetrator, even if they have yet to be born.

Two years ago, Mr Shin did the unthinkable. He escaped from the labour camp of his birth, then from the world's most secretive and repressive state. Now he is trying to rebuild a new life in South Korea. He has never told his story in public before but, as the international community courts the regime of Kim Jong Il in an attempt to wrest nuclear weapons from his grasp, Mr Shin has broken his silence about the estimated 200,000 people held in labour camps.

With no education beyond the simple writing and maths taught in Camp 14's school, Mr Shin speaks slowly and unsteadily, but in concise sentences. "I don't know why I was there," he says. "I was simply born there. I knew nothing of the outside world. I had no complaints; I just accepted my lot."

In 1996, at the age of 14, he was forced to watch the executions of his mother and brother. They had been caught trying to escape. His mother was hanged, and his brother was shot.

Lifting his shirt, Mr Shin reveals a wild and angry scar left by the camp's torturers as they applied hot coals to his back during interrogation after the failed escape. Even the weathered, wrinkled skin above the scar looks like it should belong to someone at least twice his 24 years. The end of the middle finger on his right hand is missing, sliced off as punishment for dropping a sewing machine table.

On 2 January 2005, Mr Shin and a friend were collecting firewood. They noticed that a section of the electrified barbed wire fence surrounding the camp was unguarded and decided to make a run for it. His friend was electrocuted and died instantly but Mr Shin managed to crawl through, suffering horrific leg burns.

For 25 days he walked and hitched his way towards the Chinese border. "I broke into three houses and took what food and money I could find," he says. "Eventually, I came across a group of merchants heading into China and joined them." Despite possessing no papers (political prisoners are not classed as citizens) he got past the border guards by bribing them with cigarettes.

Owing to the secretive nature of the North Korean state, Mr Shin's testimony is almost impossible to verify. But Kim Sang Hun, an activist with a decade's experience of defectors, says he is telling the truth. "Whether he will ever be able to overcome the psychological trauma of what he's been through I don't know," says Mr Kim. The two men met the Tory leader, David Cameron, yesterday and they plan to visit the Foreign Office today.

Rights groups are concerned that the international community is ignoring North Korea's appalling human rights record.
A new Christian Solidarity Worldwide report says abuses in North Korea are so systematic and widespread that they constitute crimes against humanity which individual states and the United Nations have a responsibility to prosecute.

Mr Shin cannot forget those he left behind. "Please don't make me out to be a hero," he says. "I was a coward. In the prisons there were real heroes, people who refused to confess as the guards executed them. There are many more people just like me in there." news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2679480.ece