Religious offering: Faith, hope - and Western vanity

(Photo: Jerome Taylor)

The practice of Hindu pilgrims shaving their heads has created a £3.7m business for a southern Indian temple that sells tons of hair to Westerners. Jerome Taylor reports from Tirumala, Andhra Pradesh

Published: 16 December 2006, The Independent.

Dressed in her best yellow sari Mahibha Basu laughs nervously and threads her long, dark hair through her fingers as she sits on a stool awaiting her turn to see the barber. All around her, nimble-fingered professionals with razor-sharp blades are cutting hair with the kind of speed and precision that is only honed by years of practice. Ms Basu is not waiting for just another haircut. She is in one of Hinduism's holiest temples and is taking part in a pilgrimage of enormous religious significance.
Three minutes later she emerges into the crisp morning sunlight and makes her way to the main temple complex. With a bright red tikka mark adorning her forehead and coconut offerings in her hand, Ms Basu looks like any other Hindu pilgrim but with one startling difference. Her head has been completely shaved.
Her hair, meanwhile, has been carefully tied together and placed in a giant steel tub for storage. Within a matter of months Ms Basu's black tresses could be half a world away, adorning the head of any of the A-list celebrities in the West, from Paris Hilton to Victoria Beckham to Donatella Versace, who have embraced the fashion for hair extensions.
Ms Basu is just one of thousands of devotees who travel to Tirumala temple in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, one of Hinduism's most sacred religious sites and a place all Hindus are expected to visit at least once in their lifetime. Forty thousand pilgrims arrive every day to worship at the feet of Lord Venkateswara, a powerful avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu who, devotees believe, has the ability to grant the wish of any pilgrim who has made the journey to his temple. During major religious festivals the authorities prepare for up to 120,000 pilgrims to make the journey up the forest-clad mountain where the centuries-old Dravidian temple stands. So many people come to Tirumala, in fact, that many Indians claim the temple is the world's most popular pilgrimage site, even outstripping the Vatican and Mecca in the sheer numbers arriving on a daily basis.
Tirumala's draw is largely down to the awesome power of Lord Venkateswara. But what makes this particular temple stand out is the incredible number of people who have their heads shaved as part of the worshipping ritual in a tradition known as "tonsuring". Practised by Hindus for thousands of years, it symbolises the devotee's desire to overcome their ego, a fundamental teaching of the Hindu faith. But nowhere is tonsuring more enthusiastically practised than at Tirumala.
Ms Basu has travelled 1,500 miles from her native Bengal to ask the presiding deity to grant her most fervent wish. Four years ago she fell pregnant but miscarried shortly afterwards. "Now I am trying to get pregnant again," she says. "I have come here to ask the god to grant me and my husband a child."
In one of the many buildings surrounding the main complex, pilgrims queue in long snaking lines as they wait to see one of the temple's 600 barbers. Working in shifts around the clock and using nothing but a sharp razor, water and immense skill they can cut off a pilgrim's hair in a matter of minutes.
The effect is astonishing. All around the temple thousands of bald devotees stand in groups, their laughter echoing off the walls as they joke and point at each other's new, unfamiliar look. Bald-headed children run between the multitude of hat wallahs that line the surrounding streets selling a vast array of baseball caps to protect heads from the baking sun.
For the authorities who run Tirumala, the enormous volume of hair produced each day has spawned a lucrative business courtesy of the Western world's newly discovered desire for human hair extensions - a fashion that has become hugely popular over the past couple of years thanks to the endorsement of celebrities. The temple has been able to cash in on an incredible growth in demand. Thomas Gold, whose Italian-based company Great Lengths International buys hair only from Tirumala, says the price of hair from the temple is now 10 times what it was five years ago.
"It's really amazing how the price has just shot up every year," he says from his company headquarters in Rome. "The Indians started understanding that this was a booming business and that we would still purchase at whatever price."
The industry has also benefited from a shift in the public's perception of hair extensions. "Up until five or six years ago," says Mr Gold, "it was unthinkable for a woman to say 'Look I'm wearing hair extensions'. Now women will positively show them off to their friends. The taboo has been abolished."
The global hair industry is now worth an estimated £160m and is growing by 25 to 30 per cent each year. Indian hair is particularly sought after because it is cheaper than European varieties and will not have been chemically treated or dyed. Moreover Chinese hair, which globally still makes up the majority of hair exports, is considered too coarse to make good hair extensions.
Over the course of a year, the temple auctions 90 tons of hair, providing revenue of around £3.7m which is then ploughed back into charitable causes, including a number of specialist hospitals. "The money from hair is significant but it isn't our main source of income," says the temple's executive officer, APVN Sarma. "Our primary source is donations but the income from hair is still very important."
The temple has an annual budget of £90m, making it one of the richest religious institutions in India and also one of the country's largest charities. Part of the reason why Tirumala is so popular with devotees and donors is the temple's long tradition of welcoming all visitors regardless of caste and religion. It is one of the few major Hindu temples that allows non-Hindus to enter the inner sanctum that holds the deity.
"There is no shrine in India where so many subdivisions of Hinduism recognise this as a holy place," says Mr Sarma. "We even have a number of Muslim and Christian devotees. It has always been a temple where other religions are recognised." But for the temple authorities, hair wholesalers and the thousands of low-income Indians employed in the country's hair trade, the popularity of hair extensions could not have come at a more opportune time. Two years ago the Indian hair market was on the verge of collapse thanks to a surprise religious ruling from an orthodox rabbi.
Until then Tirumala's main clients were not the exclusive hair salons of Mayfair and Rodeo Drive but the Jewish wig makers of Brooklyn who provide many orthodox women with sheitels to cover their hair. The business, much of which is run from New York, is a lucrative one with some of the costlier wigs selling for anything up to $4,000.
Indian hair was popular with sheitel makers for the same reasons it is now popular for hair extensions; it was cheaper than European hair but equally thick and glossy. But after travelling to Tirumala in 2004 a London-based Rabbi, Dayan Aharon Dovid Dunner, issued a decree arguing that sheitels made from Indian hair were not kosher because the hair came from an idolatrous ritual. Although Judaism follows no central religious authority and even though a majority of rabbis disagreed with Rabbi Dunner's ruling, the orthodox community obeyed the decree almost unanimously. From Brooklyn to Tel Aviv giant bonfires were erected as women burnt their Indian sheitels. "It was chaos," says one manufacturer who asked not to be named. "Overnight sales of Indian hair dried up as everyone frantically bought up European wigs. No one uses Indian hair now."
Hair wholesalers in India saw their market disappear over-night. Yet salvation came in the most unlikely form: the hair extension-loving celebrity, and soon the industry was booming again.
As the hair extension industry grows so do the question marks over where and how the hair in our salons came to be there. Stories have emerged of impoverished European women desperately selling hair that took them years to grow. Even worse, human rights groups have made accusations that much of China's hair comes from labour camps. But for those clients worried about the moral repercussions of buying human hair for their extensions, Indian temple hair has the added bonus of being one of the most ethical sources not only because the money goes to charity but also because the hair is given up wholly voluntarily.
It is a fact that has not gone unnoticed by those wishing to market temple hair to its full capacity. "There is nothing to hide about this beautiful business. It's a win-win situation for everyone," says Mr Gold, who feels more clients are starting to insist on ethically-sourced hair.
It is a wonderful irony that hair discarded by pilgrims in order to prove they can overcome their ego is then shipped and sold to Westerners looking to improve their physical appearance and self-confidence. The bizarre role reversal the hair goes through is not lost on the temple authorities. "People in this part of the world tonsure their hair to lose their pride," says Ramapulla Reddy, one of the temple's senior administrators. "On the other side of the world they do the opposite."
Even though the vast majority of devotees at Tirumala have little idea what lies in store for their hair, they seem unconcerned by the idea. "I don't care where the hair goes afterwards," laughs D Vasudevarao, a pilgrim who has been coming to Tirumala for 20 years. "What is most important to me is that I have left my ego outside the temple. What happens to the hair afterwards is immaterial."
For Ms Basu the idea that her hair might one day adorn someone else's head is a delightful surprise. "I think it's wonderful that my hair might be used in the West to make someone happy," she says. "Why not? I have no need for it."
ends.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2079344.ece

Poles apart: how gay people suffer under the new regime

(Photo: Kampania)

By Jerome Taylor in Warsaw

Published: 01 December 2006, The Independent

Twenty-five years ago, two identical twins, once childhood stars in Poland during the Sixties, were on the run from the Communist regime's secret police. Today, they are the President and Prime Minister of their country, and fiercely proud of Poland's feisty role in Europe and its close friendship with the United States.
One of the brothers, President Lech Kaczynski, flew to Britain this month to meet the Queen and Tony Blair, part of an official visit during which the two countries celebrated their close alliance, built on a mild mutual Euroscepticism and a firm belief in pursuing the "war on terror". Lech's brother, Jaroslaw, remained in Warsaw running the country as Prime Minister.
But the journey they have made from being on the run to running the country has come at an unacceptably high price for many Poles. The country's gay community today feels the cold blast of exclusion, just as the twins did 25 years ago.
Homosexuals in Poland are under siege, as right-wing youth groups carrying banners proclaiming "zakaz pedalowania" ("ban paedophilia") hurl stones at gay pride marches, and mainstream politicians mutter dark threats of sacking homosexual teachers to "protect the nation's children".
For young gay Poles like Dominik Piotrovski, a student from Warsaw, homophobic attacks are on the rise, especially against those gay men and women brave enough to be publicly open about their sexuality.
"In the last few months, homosexuals have become public enemy number one. We are now part of a very targeted group," he says. Two weeks ago, Dominik and his boyfriend were attacked by a group of skinheads shouting homophobic chants. "I felt like an animal. When you feel like you're being hunted it's a horribly scary experience."
His friend, Lech Vliasz, says that the pressure to hide his sexual orientation in public is exhausting. "We're tired of having to pretend we're not gay," he says.
To be openly gay, even in Warsaw, Poland's cosmopolitan capital, has become increasingly fraught with danger.
Hidden deep within the warren of narrow, labyrinthine back streets that make up Warsaw's picture-perfect old town lies Tomba Tomba, a dark and cavernous nightclub packed with young Polish men and women enjoying a night out.
But Tomba Tomba is more than a nightclub - it is a sanctuary, one of Warsaw's few gay clubs. Silhouetted against a backdrop of homoerotic murals stand young couples kissing, savouring moments of public intimacy and the brief respite they bring from the increasingly homophobic atmosphere in their country. But whether this sanctuary will remain open is unknown. Tomba's sister club was shut down by police earlier this year. It is a sad legacy for a country that legalised homosexuality as early as 1932, years before many of its western European counterparts, and many point the finger of blame squarely at the Kaczynski twins.
Opponents accuse the brothers of legitimising homophobia through statements critical of gays, and also by allying their party, Law and Justice, with politicians from the ultra-nationalist and openly homophobic League of Polish Families.
Although the pair have somewhat toned down their anti-gay rhetoric since sweeping to power in elections last year, the two brothers, known in Poland as "the terrible twins", have a long history of expressing open hostility towards homosexuality.
As mayor of Warsaw, Lech Kaczynski twice banned gay pride marches, telling protesters: "I respect your right to demonstrate as citizens, but not as homosexuals."
During campaigning for the general elections, Jaroslaw described homosexuality as an "abomination" and has publicly said he would rather gay men and women did not teach. Such sentiments are popular with the devoutly Catholic and traditional rural classes that make up then twins' political power base. According to recent polls, 89 per cent of the Polish population think homosexuality is abnormal.
Gay rights groups, NGOs and many in the teaching profession say they are now suffering from a major homophobic backlash. In June, Poland's state prosecutor was ordered to investigate all gay groups for illegal financing, criminal connections and links to paedophilia.
Equating homosexuality with child abuse is now common in Poland. Some politicians speaking in parliament and the media have begun using the word pederasta to describe homosexuals. But Malgorzata Sadurska, a member of Law and Justice, rejects accusations that the government is homophobic.
"I cannot pretend our party is not in favour of a union based on a man and a woman," she says in the restaurant of the Polish parliament. "But our image has been publicised through the prism of President Kaczynski's decision to refuse a gay parade when he was Mayor of Warsaw. We are in favour of the classical family model. Poland is a tolerant country." But activists accuse the Polish government of legitimising homophobia by inviting the League of Polish Families into their coalition, and in particular by awarding the party's leader, Roman Giertych, the position of Education Minister.
Mr Giertych's party has a long history of virulent, verging on violent, opposition to gay rights. During Poland's pride season earlier this summer, the league's deputy said gay rights activists should be "bludgeoned" if they held any marches. The parades did go ahead, but in April, right-wing protesters, many from the party's youth wing, hurled stones and eggs at pride marchers in Krakow. In response to the pride marches in Warsaw, Roman Giertych led his own self-styled "normality march".
Pawel Leszkowicz, who writes on gay issues in Poland and recently held a controversial exhibition of gay art in Gdansk, the home town of anti-government dissent, says the decision to award Mr Giertych the education ministry encourages ordinary Poles to believe that homophobia is acceptable.
"Poland's far right is now entering into mainstream politics," he says. "The worst thing about Poland is that politicians in government officially voice homophobia or prejudice towards homosexuals, whereas in western Europe most right-wing parties have long abandoned that approach." Any attempt by teachers to promote sexual equality in schools has been ruthlessly dealt with. When the deputy Education Minister was asked by a Polish newspaper to comment, he calmly replied: "Oh, the world used to manage without tolerance and it will keep going without it."
The gay rights debate in Poland has become a crucial, highly contested part of the wider social and political struggle being played out in the country between the traditionalist, Catholic elements and the more secular, liberal sections of society.
The former are in the majority. It is not uncommon to hear broadcasts, particularly on the highly popular Catholic radio station Radio Marya, voicing the view that homosexuality is a sickness which can and should be cured.
The twins' unwillingness to publicly encourage sexual tolerance has serious repercussions for those trying to eradicate homophobia in Poland.
Marta, a 28-year-old psychologist with Kampania, an NGO working against homophobia, finds her work frustrating.
"They just don't want to do anything," she says. "The situation is so much worse now. I get letters every week from teenagers saying they want to kill themselves because they don't want to be gay anymore."
But for young people like Dominik and Lech, the rise in homophobia has turned them into activists and forced them to battle prejudice. "Now I actually treat my everyday life as a form of activism," says Dominik.
"Sometimes I feel I wouldn't be so passionate about activism if there wasn't such a good reason to be so." Lech agrees. "It's like Gandhi said: 'First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.' So in that case we're very close to winning."

ends.

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2029283.ece

http://www.kampania.org.pl/

The rebirth of Lodz draws Poland's young emigrants back

By Jerome Taylor in Lodz
Published: 28 October 2006

On a dusty building site in the heart of Poland's unheralded second city, the skeletal remains of what were once the region's famous redbrick textile factories are being brought back to life as fashionable apartments.
These sleek modern dwellings are the latest sign that Lodz - or Wodz as it is pronounced - is giving the lie to scare stories suggesting eastern Europe is going west and staying there.
The gentrified flats are being snapped up by Polish immigrants from Britain and Ireland, people who left their country two years ago when Poland joined the European Union and now want to return home and start a new life, thanks to the higher wages they earned abroad.
"Poles in London, Berlin or Dublin are buying these flats in Lodz because they know something is happening in this city," says Dorota Uravska, who works with the Australian company developing the derelict factories.
Cities like Lodz are undergoing an economic recovery, thanks to the huge amounts of cash and foreign investment opened up by Poland's entry in the EU. Structural funds from the EU alone are worth a staggering $60bn (£31.6bn) until 2013 and Poland's economic growth remains a healthy 5 per cent. All along the two and a half miles of the recently renovated Piotrkowska Street, Europe's longest high street, the fashionable boutiques, bars and restaurants are bustling with locals as they savour the transformation of a city where half the work force was out of a job as recently as the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The present unemployment is 14 per cent and set to keep falling. Three thousand jobs were created last year alone as international companies including Gillette, Indesit and Dell moved in to take advantage of low wages and a willing workforce.
Pawel is typical of the twenty-somethings of Lodz in having worked abroad, in Scotland and Holland, but deciding to come back. "This city is definitely going places now," he said. "There was no way I could stay away for ever."
For the 800,000 inhabitants, the city's turnaround is a fitting comeback for a town that was once nicknamed Ziemia Obiecana, the Promised Land. In the latter half of the 19th century, it was the second-largest city in the Russian empire and one of central Europe's largest textile manufacturers. Almost a third of the population was Jewish, and German, Russian and even Lancashire cotton workers flocked to its booming mills.
The Second World War destroyed any hopes of Lodz retaining its multicultural heritage. As few as 4,000 of the city's 300,000 Jews survived the extermination camps, and nearly all the German families fled the Soviet army as it advanced on Berlin. Remarkably, Lodz managed to avoid bombs and shells and, with Krakow, remains one of the few major Polish cities to survive the war architecturally.
But Lodz's tragic history has also provided the city with a second valuable job-creating asset: tourism. Two hours' west of Warsaw and economically run down, for years Lodz remained far from the tourist trail. Now it is the third most visited city after Warsaw and Krakow.
The Mayor, Jerzy Kropiwnicki, believes recognising Lodz's past is the key to securing the city's future. In 2004, the city marked the 60th anniversary of the liquidation of the Lodz ghetto by opening a giant memorial commemorating those who died.
"For the past 60 years, these commemorations had been rather timid," he said. "The unexpected result of [the 2004] commemorations was that visits from Germans and Jews skyrocketed. We decided the city's past was its best asset and that we must promote Lodz as a city with roots in four cultures, German, Jewish, Polish and Russian."
Asked what he would say to people in Lodz thinking of leaving for western Europe to seek higher wages, the Mayor said: "I would say learn what you can learn in the place you are and once you have learned what you can, come back."

ends.

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article1935932.ece

Koran provides the ultimate memory test for Muslim boys

(Photo:http://www.quran.gov.ae/)

By Jerome Taylor

Published: The Independent, 11 October 2006

They come from far and wide hoping to find instant fame in what is one of the Islamic world's most hotly fought-over competitions - young men and boys hungry to display their talent to the world.But this is no glitzy ceremony searching for the next pop idol. This is Dubai's International Holy Koran Award, a highly prestigious recitation competition in which contestants as young as nine recite Islam's holy book from memory. The annual award, sponsored by Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, held its final round last night. Eighty contestants aged 21 and under, from across the globe, now have a nervous two-day wait before the winner is announced."The competition has ended. Now the judges will deliberate and winners will be announced on Thursday," said Ahmed Al Zahid, a spokesman for the award who said it was the "Olympics of Koran reading".Since the start of Ramadan, when the competition begins, scores of young contestants have climbed a large stage in front of an audience of thousands and began their recitation of the Koran at a random place chosen by the judges.In scenes reminiscent of an American spelling bee, any lapses in memory or mispronunciation in Arabic were corrected by the sounding of a bell as the judges, prominent Islamic scholars from across the region, assessed the contestant's ability to recite the Koran according to Islamic practice.Reciting the Koran from memory, a practice known as tajweed, plays a central role in helping Muslims gain a deeper understanding of their faith. Entrants are expected to be able to recite the holy book - estimated to contain more than 77,000 words - in full.Mohammed Luwan, a 20-year-old contestant from Nigeria, said: "I began to memorise the Holy Koran when I was 15 and completed memorisation of the holy book at 17."The award's youngest entrant, nine-year-old Australian Abdullah al Zahabi, amazed the audience last week as he took to the stage to begin his recitation.Standing next to his father afterwards, he told Gulf News: "My brother and I memorised the Koran at an early age and with help and support from my parents." He said that he wants to be a Muslim scholar when he grows up.He competed against 10-year-old Khubaib Muhammad, who has spent hours each day for the last three years in preparation for the award. Before taking to the stage, he said: "It was hard work, but ultimately it was worth it because I got here. I'm not nervous. I'm ready and prepared."Now in its tenth year, the event has become one of the most prestigious tajweed competitions in the world, with a top prize of more than pounds 35,000. The winners can expect a raft of invitations from across the world to recite holy texts during religious gatherings.The competition also contains a separate programme for prisoners in Dubai, who can reduce their jail terms by proving that they can learn the Koran.The programme is not open for those facing the death sentence or guilty of murder, but for those on lesser sentences, memorising the whole of the holy book can knock 20 years off their time in prison. The winners can expect invitations from across the world to recite texts.

ends.

The kurinji blooms just once every 12 years. But are its days numbered?

(Photo: Roy Matthew)

By Jerome Taylor
Published: 27 September 2006

Far up in the Nilgiri hills, a vast expanse of grassland at the southern edge of India's Western Ghat mountain range, the verdant landscape is usually only interrupted by a flash of colour from tea plantation workers and their brilliant saris.
But once a decade the hills above the tea fields erupt in an explosion of blue and purple, thanks to the kurinji plant, a tiny flower that blossoms just once every 12 years and is found solely in the southern Western Ghats.
This year the kurinji is flowering across the Nilgiri hills in the states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, but its numbers are much reduced. Over-development in the region and the introduction of non-indigenous plant species have destroyed much of the kurinji's habitat - and environmental campaigners are concerned it may soon disappear altogether. In Kerala there are now just 14 square kilometres of suitable grassland left on which kurinji can grow.
"When we first started work in 1982 you could see the kurinji all over the Nilgiris as it blossomed," said G Rajkumar, a bank employee from Thiruvananthapuram who now leads a campaign to help protect the flower. "Now those areas have been massively reduced. Even though it only grows above 5,000ft, it is ultimately people that are responsible for its demise."
The fragile ecosystem of the Nilgiri hills has found itself under pressure as tourism booms and commercial plantations seek to cash in on India's burgeoning economy by planting numerous species of non-indigenous trees, especially acacia, pine and eucalyptus trees. As demand for cash crops grow, so do the plantations.
During the summer, hordes of local and foreign tourists journey up the mountain passes to the cool hill stations that dot the Western Ghats, escaping the oppressive heat in the plains below and sampling the only tea grown in south India. The result is a major water shortage which, environmentalists warn, threatens to damage the kurinji's natural habitat.
As the flowers blossom this summer, the worst fears of environmentalists appear to have come true.
The loss of the kurinji would not only be a huge blow to science but also to south India's long cultural heritage, which lends the plant near mythical status.
"It's impossible to digest that fact and accept it," John Britto, a local botanist and a Jesuit priest, told the Los Angeles Times this week. "As a person of this land, a culture, it would be a terrible loss. We are wedded to the soil, the land, to the plants, and that link between man and nature is getting lost. That's irreparable."
Although Western botanists first recorded the flower blossoming in 1858, the indigenous hill tribes of the Nilgiri have long venerated the little blue flower in their local customs and folklore. One tribe, the Muduvar, use the kurinji's blossoming to help calculate their age.
Tamil poems dating back more than 2,000 years praise the karungal kurinji (literally "black-stemmed flower") and the honey made from bees that feed on its nectar. Hindu mythology records the god Murugan wearing a garland of the flowers at his wedding to a local girl.

ends.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1761659.ece

http://kurinji.in/

Pride of a continent: Africa's gifts to the world

From music through literature to politics and science, men and women who have battled tough upbringings are now leaders in their fields. By Jonathan Brown and Jerome Taylor

Published: 21 September 2006

(This article is from the ( RED ) edition of The Independent of 21 September 2006, guest-designed by Giorgio Armani. Half the revenue from the edition was donated to the Global Fund to Fight Aids.)

Music: Youssou N'Dour
When the credibility of last year's Live8 festival threatened to be undermined following accusations that the concerts for Africa were excluding those they were meant to help, Bob Geldof could point with some relief to the participation of Youssou N'Dour.
Although he may only have come to the attention of white audiences when he started recording with the likes of Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush and Neneh Cherry in the 1980s, N'Dour was a star in his native Dakar from the age of 12. Fusing traditional Senegalese pop or mbalax, with his own distinctive style, the Grammy-winning singer has become a beacon for West African musical culture - which embraces musicians like fellow Senegalese Baaba Maal or Malian guitarist Afel Bocoum.
But N'Dour, who wrote the official music for the 1998 football World Cup, has deployed his fame to highlight issues from human rights to political prisoners. His Project Joko aims to link Senegalese communities across Africa and around the world through a network of internet cafes.

Literature: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, is already earning the 29-year-old Nigerian comparisons with Africa's best writers. Despite having lived in the United States for the past decade, she continues to draw her inspiration from her home country. Her latest book, published last month, is set before the devastating Biafran war. Adichie made it to the final of the Orange Prize in 2004 with her first novel Purple Hibiscus.
The world has waited 20 years for the novel from Ngugi wa Thiong'o, 68. The former professor, political dissident, prisoner and exile did not disappoint critics. Wizard of the Crow was published to strong reviews in the US in August where it was translated from his once-banned language of Gikuyu into English by the author. Set in a fictional African country, Ngugi describes a land "of crooked roads, robberies, runaway viruses of death, hospitals without medicine, rampant unemployment without relief, daily insecurity, epidemic alcoholism."

Politics: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf; Joaquim Chissano
Hopes are high in Liberia that Africa's first democratically elected black female president can deliver reform to a country long ravaged by civil war. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a 68-year-grandmother of six, has already earned the nickname "Iron Lady" and, according to Forbes, is the 51st most powerful woman in the world.
A role model for the former Citibank accountant is the one-time Frelimo guerrilla Joaquim Chissano, who led his country for nearly two decades. After fighting against the Portuguese in the 1970s he became one of Africa's most powerful voices for peace, reconciling factions in Mozambique and his party, winning multi-party elections in 1994 and 1999 before stepping down from office in 2005. This year he will collect the second annual Chatham House Prize to mark his achievements, not only in delivering political and military stability but for turning Mozambique into an economic success story with an impressive growth rate.

Religion: John Sentamu: Fr Matthew Kukah
Born in a village outside Kampala, the sixth of 13 children, John Sentamu has risen to become the second most powerful man in the Church of England, the mother church of a family of 38 churches. A former High Court judge who, at the age of 24, defied the Ugandan despot Idi Amin with his staunch independence, his enthronement at York Minster was accompanied by African singing and dancing. The archbishop played the drums. In August a vigil of prayer and fasting for peace in the Middle East generated international media coverage.
Meanwhile, Father Matthew Kukah, a Nigerian, has been acclaimed as an "extraordinary" moral leader in the fight for freedom and democracy in his own country. He is currently playing a leading role in attempts to reconcile the late Ken Saro-Wiwa's Mosop organisation with Shell Petroleum in the Niger Delta.

Fashion: Alek Wek; Waris Dirie
A member of the Dinka tribe from Sudan, Alek Wek has used her profile as one of the world's most famous models to advance her causes. Forced to flee her native land during the bloody civil war, she has become an advocate for refugees wordwide.
Waris Dirie, once voted the most beautiful woman in the world, has also used her profile as a model for good causes. Her experiences as a child growing up in Somalia drove her to become an advocate for women's rights. Having undergone female genital mutilation at the hands of a desert gypsy, she has campaigned against the practice, becoming an ambassador for the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, in the process.

Arts: Romuald Hazoumé: El Anatsui
The young sculptor has successfully exported his African vision to an international audience. Born in Porto-Novo, he continues to live and work in the Benin Republic. His experiments with plastic jerry cans, which began in the mid-1980s, were inspired by the way fuel is transported dangerously on the streets of Africa. He works in a diverse range of media, employing found objects, photography, video and sound installations - even using smells - to explore themes of corruption and resistance. Hazoumé has exhibited at the Hayward Gallery, London, the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. His contribution of jerry can "masks" to an exhibition of African art at the Smithsonian last year was hailed by the Washington Post's art critic as "haunting... terrifying".
El Anatsui, from Ghana, hails from an older generation of artists. Now based in Nigeria he has been working and exhibiting since the 1970s but has been building a growing following in recent years, both in London where his work is now represented in the British Museum and in America, where he recently staged his first solo show in New York.

Environmental: Wangari Maathai; Boureima Wankoye
The Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. She campaigns on a wide range of issues from deforestation to women's rights. Having challenged Africa's overwhelmingly male leaders to put an end to the wars that blight the continent, this month she accused the Kenyan government of failing to halt settlement in its threatened forests. Since her Green Belt Movement was formed in 1977, it has trained 30,000 women and planted 30 million trees.
Boureima Wankoye joined the UN Environment Programme's Global 500 Roll of Honour in 2003 for his work encouraging the sustainable development of the Niger's deteriorating wetlands through the mass planting of gum arabic for export. He is also president of the African Industrial Association in Brussels.

Business: Dr Titilola Banjoko; Strive Masiyiwa
Around 250,000 physicians and scientists of African descent work in the US alone. The loss of skills and know-how is seen as an impediment to development. One women who is doing something about it is Dr Titilola Banjoko, managing director of AfricaRecruit, which aims to solve Africa's skills crisis with the use of African labour.
Meanwhile, one of the men fuelling Africa's mobile phone boom is Strive Masiyiwa, not that the authorities in his native Zimbabwe made it easy for him, battling all the way to the Supreme Court before they would grant him the first mobile licence. There are now some 35 million mobile phone connections in Africa and it is one of the fastest-growing sectors of the continental economy. Mr Masiyiwa's company, Econet, is one of the five biggest, operating in eight countries and boasting annual revenues of £159m.

Sport: Dikembe Mutombo; Samuel Eto'o
Voted the NBA's best defensive player for three years out of four, the 7ft 2in Congolese basketballer became one of the most famous and highly paid players in America. However, he has not forgotten the conditions of people at home in Kinshasa. His charitable foundation, Mutombo, has donated $18.5m (£9.8m) to build two medical centres in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Cameroon footballer Samuel Eto'o is one of the most feared strikers in the game. Three times African Footballer of the Year, since moving to FC Barcelona from Real Madrid he has been a top scorer for both club and country, helping his team to become European Champions.

Science & Medicine: Florence Mirembe; Peter Mugenyi
One of Uganda's leading doctors, she has spent her life trying to improve conditions for mothers giving birth. The facts are stark: about 585,000 mothers die a year in the developing world in childbirth - more than one a minute. Her work was recognised by the World Medical Association which named her as one of its Top 60 Caring Physicians. Dr Mirembe also set up Save the Mothers, a charity that fosters partnerships between scientists in the developed and developing world.
Peter Mugyenyi is one of Africa's most prominent scientists working to combat HIV/Aids. He is director of the Joint Clinical Research Centre in Uganda and was a guest of Laura Bush's during the President's State of the Union address in 2003.

ends.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article1655623.ece

http://www.joinred.com/

Holy Terror - The rise of evangelical politicians and the homophobic backlash

(German MP Volker Beck is attacked by homophobic protestors during Moscow's Gay Pride 2006)

By Jerome Taylor

Published: Attitude Magazine, September 2006.

Throught the democratic world - in the new EU states of Central and Eastern Europe, in Russia and the US - right-wing politicians and Christian fundamentalists are joining forces to attack and stigmatise a generation of gay people.

On a sombre grey afternoon in late May, a group of Russian men and women dared to do something that had never been done in their country before. Under a steady drizzle of rain they approached Alexander Gardens, a small park in the north-east corner of the Kremlin, each holding a solitary flower.

The idea was as simple as it was poignant: To hold Russia’s first ever gay pride march by laying flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier - Russia’s most famous monument to the country’s Second World War fight against fascism and a tribute to the millions who died protecting Mother Russia from Nazi Germany. The choice of venue was chosen to symbolically associate the Russian gay community’s fight for equality with the country’s battle against fascism over sixty years ago.

The march had, of course, been banned by the city authorities who had long made clear their contempt for gay rights. Even so, campaigners thought, in a democratic country they should be able to hold their demonstration with or without the authority’s approval.

But it was not to be. As the group approached the park gates, an incongruous alliance of radical Orthodox and ultra-nationalist protestors chanting “death to sodomites!” attacked the procession, hurling eggs and rocks as they went. The police stood by and did little except arrest Nikolai Alexseyev, the demonstration’s chief organiser, and a number of other non-violent protestors.

Half an hour later, a smaller group of activists arrived outside Moscow’s City Hall and proudly unfurled their rainbow flags. Once again they were attacked as truncheon wielding police simply looked on. Scores were injured including [pictured above] the gay veteran German politician Volker Beck, who was punched in the face and hit by projectiles.

The graphic image of blood pouring down a European politician’s face woke the world up to the depressing state of gay rights across much of Eastern Europe and the worrying resurgence in right-wing, religiously inspired homophobia across much of the Western democratic world.

For gay rights campaigners, Eastern Europe and the Baltics has become the new frontline in the battle for equal rights. But even in supposedly liberal bastions of Western democracy such as the United States and Australia, the furious debate over gay marriage and civil unions has resulted in what many say is a new backlash against the gay community.

“In the US and in Poland, Russia and Latvia we are experiencing an almighty homophobic backlash,” says leading gay rights activist Peter Tatchell. And mainstream politicians, often influenced by their Christian beliefs, are increasingly leading this new offensive against the gay community.

****

Nine days before the violence in Moscow, Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov travelled to Strasbourg and delivered a message to Europe on the eve of his country’s chairmanship of the continent’s top human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe. The message was clear. Russia’s leadership of the council, Lavrov said, would be “devoted to openness.”

Yet the same day, Yuri Luzhkov, the conservative mayor of Russia’s capital, was delivering a different message to the outside world. After months of speculation his office announced what it had been threatening to do ever since the idea was first mooted: Russia’s first gay pride event would not be allowed to proceed and anyone who held an unauthorised demonstration faced being arrested. His assurances, we now know, came true.

Evidence obtained by New York based Human Rights Watch shows just how instrumental the Moscow authorities were in damaging popular support for the country’s first pride attempt. A memorandum sent by Mayor Luzhkov in March told a number of his colleagues to begin a disinformation campaign against supporters of the pride march. “It is necessary to take concrete measures to prevent holding public and mass gay events in the capital,” the memorandum read. “Organise an active campaign in the mass media…using appeals from citizens and religious and public organisations.”

Luzhkov’s deputy, Liudmila Shvetsova, was even more unforgiving in her views towards homosexuals. In a note sent to her boss on March 17 she wrote that a pride event would be, “direct propaganda for immorality, insulting the honour and dignity of the overwhelming majority of Muscovites…undermining the moral principles of the society.”

In recent years Russia has seen a spike in the number of homophobic attacks coupled with increasingly anti-gay rhetoric from its politicians and key religious leaders, particularly from the country’s Orthodox Church.

Nikolai Baev, a prominent Russian gay rights activist, is angered by the way such politicians are now exacerbating an already dire situation. “Gay and lesbians cannot be open,” he said. “It seems that the Russian authorities use homophobic hysteria and anti-western campaigns to mobilise nationalist sentiment. And those authorities prefer to satisfy the demands of the church than let gays and lesbians live in peace.”

The Russian authorities’ support for the Orthodox Church, whose more radical elements swell the ranks of anti-gay protests, was made clear last month when Patriarch Alexei II, the church’s head and an avid supporter of a pride ban, was given a state award by President Vladimir Putin in June for his “outstanding achievements in humanitarian activities.”

According to Nikolai Alexeyev, the pride organiser who was arrested along with many others that day, most of the anti-gay rhetoric in Russia is couched in religious terms.“The Church has played a very big role,” he told Attitude from his office in Moscow. “Even some priests from the Orthodox Church were at the protest and were blessing all these neo-fascists attacking homosexual rights! The church didn’t say a single word about why their priests and officials took part in all these events.”

The difficulties faced by Russia’s gay and lesbian citizens and the banning of gay pride marches has been repeated across much of Eastern Europe. Even in some EU countries, which are expected to guarantee the rights of all citizens as part of their membership status, LGBT communities are finding themselves increasingly on the defensive and homophobic attacks are on the increase.

When Amnesty International decided to hold a conference in June on tackling prejudice across the region, it is significant that the venue they chose was not Moscow, Warsaw or Riga but London. Amnesty International’s Brian Thomas McDonnell, who helped organise the conference has been monitoring a steady increase in homophobia across the region: “LGBT communities in Eastern Europe and Russia have only recently become more visible and while they are bravely ‘breaking the silence’ in their societies, they are facing a very hostile climate at all levels”He added: “Politicians must not be allowed to think that they can stir up hatred towards LGBT communities with impunity and other European countries have an obligation to hold such politicians to account.”

****

Seven hundred miles west of Moscow, two politicians especially stand accused of stirring up such hatred. Known in Poland’s gay community as the “Terrible Twins”, Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski now run the country as President and Prime Minister respectively.

Both deeply Catholic, the identical twins (who can only be told apart by their facial moles) have long made their disdain for homosexuality apparent. As mayor of Warsaw, Lech repeatedly banned gay pride marches, famously telling protestors, “I respect your right to demonstrate as citizens. But not as homosexuals.” Meanwhile Jaroslaw, who lives alone with his aging mother and their many cats, is head of the ruling Law and Justice party which favours, among other things, banning homosexuals from the teaching profession.

The twins’ anti-gay rhetoric helped win them crucial votes last year from the nation’s deeply conservative, Catholic countryside at the expense of Poland’s gay community which has found itself surrounded by hostility, both politically and physically.

Lisette Kampus, sighs wearily and takes a deep breath as she’s asked to explain what it’s like being gay in a country where, according to recent polls, 89% of the population think homosexuality is abnormal. “It’s terrible. Just terrible,” she says from the Warsaw offices of Kampania, an NGO trying to tackle homophobia in Poland. “Some mornings I wake up and I can’t believe that such a country really exists. Or that such a country is a member state of the European Union. What would be considered a hate speech in the rest of Europe is regularly practised freely and acceptably in Poland every single day.”

Things reached a new low in June when Poland’s state prosecutor announced a government investigation of all Polish gay groups for illegal financing, criminal connections and paedophilia.

For Lisette, who moved to Poland from her native Estonia to become a foot soldier in the latest battle for equal rights, much of her anger is directed at the Catholic Church and politicians such as the Kaczynski brothers who she believes came to power using their religious credentials and anti-gay platform.

“These politicians in our government know how to use religion against us,” she says. “You know they march against us thinking, ‘Under the holy cross we go to the streets, we throw stones at gay people and then later we go to the church for confession and everything is ok again’. It’s such hypocrisy.”

To recognise just how influential Catholicism can be in stirring up homophobia in Poland, one only has to turn on the radio and listen to Radio Maryja, a staunchly conservative station run by Father Tadeusz Rydzyk from the northern city of Torun, the birthplace of the great mediaeval astronomer Copernicus. Ostensibly a radio station for Poland’s faithful, Radio Maryja began broadcasting hymns, prayers and rosaries in 1991 after the Soviet Union’s collapse finally allowed Poland’s persecuted Catholics to celebrate their religion rather than hide it.

But in recent times the station has become increasingly politicised and up to 1.2million listeners tune in every day to a heavily one-sided right-wing agenda. Radio Maryja supported Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s Law and Justice party during elections last year, has given numerous interviews to their political allies including the ultra-conservative and rabidly homophobic League of Polish Families and has aired a number of less than sympathetic broadcasts on Germany, the EU, freemasonry, Jews and of course homosexuals.

To their credit, the Vatican has recently tried to distance itself from the radical views of Radio Maryja by asking the Polish church to crack down on the station and temper its broadcasts. Instead Father Rydzyk was given little more than a slap on the wrists and the sermons of hate continue.

According to the renowned Vatican commentator John Allen, Pope Benedict XVI is walking a tightrope with the more radical elements of the Polish Catholic Church. “Certainly the Vatican would support the position that the conservatives have taken against acknowledging gay marriage and so on but that doesn’t mean that the Vatican has aligned itself with the hardest right.”

In fact for many in Rome, he explains, the rabid Euroscepticism of Poland’s conservative parties is in fact at odds with the Vatican’s vision of former Soviet states bringing their Catholic values into the construction of a new Europe.

Thanks to the increasing radicalisation of the Christian right both in Poland and Russia, gay rights across Eastern Europe and the Baltic are now at threat like never before as populists aim to mimic the success of those politicians who have jumped on the anti-gay bandwagon to win votes and create a cause celebre for homophobes and sympathetic voters to rally round.

On July 22, Latvia - another EU member - became the latest nation to ban gay pride, on the somewhat spurious grounds that the police would not be able to protect marchers from anti-gay violence. If so, campaigners joked, Latvia’s ability to provide security at Nato’s summit in Riga this November must surely be in doubt.

Undeterred, a number of LGBT activists, supported by foreign demonstrators such as Nikolai Alexeyev and Peter Tatchell, held an alternative conference in the Reval Hotel Latvija. And, like two months earlier in Russia, they were besieged by a motley collection of cross-wielding religious protestors and hardline nationalists willing to attack anyone looking mildly sympathetic of the gay rights movement.

In one particularly nasty incident, bags of liquid faeces were thrown at Maris Sants, one of the only priests in Latvia brave enough to admit his homosexuality. Speaking after the event, Lars Grava, a founding member of the LGBT group Mozaika, said yet again the police failed to protect gay activists. “They did the minimum possible,” he said.

Even in Estonia, regarded as the most liberal of the Baltic States, the Dutch ambassador to Tallinn, Hans Glaubitz, quit his job earlier this year because of the homophobia he faced when walking the streets with his Cuban boyfriend. "It is not very nice to be regularly abused by drunken skinheads as a 'nigger' and to be continuously gawped at as if you have just stepped out of a UFO," he told Dutch newspapers at the time.

****

That the Christian right in Eastern Europe and the Baltic are fighting their fellow LGBT countrymen is perhaps no surprise. Though each country differs immensely culturally, linguistically and historically, all are post-Soviet states, where religion and patriarchy play a large role and where society is only slowly coming to grips with the idea of having an out-and-about queer as a next door neighbour.

Yet even Stateside, the so-called “Land of the Free”, gay campaigners are once again finding themselves on the back foot thanks to the furious debate over gay marriage – a debate that has been cynically manipulated by opportunistic politicians to score political points and increase voter turn out in their constituencies.

When the state of Massachusetts took the unprecedented step of allowing gays marital rights in May 2004, the conservative religious lobbies were not only incensed by what they saw as an attack on the sanctity of marriage but also found a new flag to rally their beleaguered troops around after a string of Republican political failures, both abroad in Iraq and Afghanistan and at home.

The 2004 Presidential elections were dominated by the issue of gay marriage which worked in favour of George Bush and the Republican Party by increasing voter turn out among socially conservative and religious voters. (The only noticeable dissenting member of George Bush’s entourage is, remarkably, gun-toting Vice President Dick Cheney whose daughter is a lesbian)

This year, in preparation for Congressional elections in November, a similar strategy has been launched – largely but not exclusively by Republicans - to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) – a proposal to have marriage defined in the American constitution as a solely heterosexual institution.Although a majority of politicians both in Congress and the Senate approve of the amendment, to actually change the American constitution requires a two-thirds majority which supporters have so far been unable to obtain.

But according to Doug Ireland, an openly gay journalist for New York’s Gay City News, there’s nothing like anti-gay rhetoric to increase support for the Republican Party in the run up to elections“The Bush-Rove strategy has been to revive the issue again as a "hot button" for the 2006 Congressional elections,” he said. He sees the FMA as an insidious attempt by Republicans to drive a wedge between Democrats and force conservative voters out to the polling booths despite the plummeting popularity of their Republican President.
A number of right-wing lobby groups are hopeful that the polarising effect of the gay marriage debate will be a useful way of encouraging Republicans to ignore their disappointments over issues such as Iraq, illegal immigration, Supreme Court nominations (to name a few conservative bug bears) and concentrate on increasing Republican domination of Congress to push through the FMA next time round. What Bill Greene, the director of conservative activist organisation RigthMarch.com, calls “one prong of a multifaceted attempt at re-energizing the base."
Yet for commentators like Ireland, the use of anti-gay rhetoric by populist politicians has particularly nasty consequences: “When political and religious leaders begin banging their anti-gay drums, there is always a noticeable increase in physical gay-bashing and anti-gay violence, as the homo-haters, especially the young, hear their bigotry justified by the larger culture. Violence against gay people has spiked after every one of these national debates over gays.”

Paul Cate, from the American Civil Liberties Union, says that while he is disappointed some politicians are still happy to deny gay people their rights, he doubts the FMA will succeed. “We’ve only amended our constitution a small number of times and we’ve never done it to strip people of their constitutional rights. And I certainly hope that we will never do that.”

Such news is little comfort for people like Mark Wolf, a gay father from the mountains of southern Colorado, deep in the heart of a Republican dominated state. Mark has been with his partner Matthew for thirteen and has a little boy through a lesbian couple. To many he is the perfect example of a loving and safe family but instead feels increasingly threatened by the resurgence in homophobia across America.“The religious right-wing extremists are doing their best to push their aggressive Christian-only agenda into our schools as well as into our bedrooms”, he says looking at a picture of his little boy.
For Mark, the most depressing aspect of the gay marriage debate that the Christian message of love and tolerance has been lost amid the hysteria of populist anti-gay rhetoric. “It’s ironic,” he says. “The Church used to condemn us for being promiscuous. Then when we asked the Church to recognize and bless our committed, monogamous unions, they refused.”
The overriding fear among most of the people interviewed for this piece is that as the pride season draws to a close, the gay communities currently most at threat from opportunist politicians living off a resurgent religiously-inspired right will be forgotten until the violence flares up again. For Peter Tatchell, the most important thing is to continue taking the fight to the homophobes. “It is precisely because the gay rights movement has made so many advances that the homophobic right is now fighting back with a newly ferocious fervour. It’s their last desperate stand.”“Keeping your head down often results in getting your head kicked in. Silence and invisibility is not a strategy for queer emancipation”

ends.

http://www.attitude.co.uk/