The headscarf martyr: murder in German court sparks Egyptian fury
• Woman was stabbed 18 times during hijab trial
• Outrage at lack of media coverage fuels protests
- Kate Connolly in Berlin and Jack Shenker in Cairo
It was while Marwa el-Sherbini was in the dock recalling how the accused had insulted her for wearing the hijab after she asked him to let her son sit on a swing last summer, that the very same man strode across the Dresden courtroom and plunged a knife into her 18 times.
Her three-year-old son Mustafa was forced to watch as his mother slumped to the courtroom floor.
Even her husband Elvi Ali Okaz could do nothing as the 28-year-old Russian stock controller who was being sued for insult and abuse took the life of his pregnant wife. As Okaz ran to save her, he too was brought down, shot by a police officer who mistook him for the attacker. He is now in intensive care in a Dresden hospital.
While the horrific incident that took place a week ago tomorrow has attracted little publicity in Europe, and in Germany has focused more on issues of court security than the racist motivation behind the attack, 2,000 miles away in her native Egypt, the 32-year-old pharmacist has been named the “headscarf martyr”. Read the rest of this entry »
Michael Jackson Memorial
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/07/07/michael.jackson.wrap/index.html
LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) — Michael Jackson’s band members, family, children and celebrities filled the stage at the Staples Center on Tuesday to sing Jackson’s “Heal the World” as his memorial service drew to a close.
Jermaine Jackson sings his brother’s favorite song “Smile” in front of the King of Pop’s casket.
The song followed a performance of “We are the World,” the 1985 hit written by Jackson and Lionel Richie to raise money for African famine relief.
During the memorial, a host of friends, stars and politicians gathered to remember the King of Pop.
Berry Gordy, founder of Motown Records, called Michael Jackson the “greatest entertainer that ever lived.”
“The more I think and talk about Michael Jackson, I feel the King of Pop is not big enough for him,” Gordy said as the crowd rose to its feet. “I think he is simply the greatest entertainer that ever lived.”
Gordy also recalled how when he auditioned the Jackson 5 in 1968, 10-year-old Michael was talented beyond his years.
“He was driven by his hunger to learn, to constantly top himself, to be the best. He was the consummate student. He studied the greats and became greater. He raised the bar and then broke the bar,” Gordy said. 
Gordy: Michael was ’special’ »
Jackson’s golden casket was placed in front of the stage at his memorial as a choir sang.
Several of Jackson’s older brothers, each wearing one sequined glove, served as pallbearers, carrying the coffin to the stage as the Andrae Crouch choir sang “Soon and Very Soon.” Read the rest of this entry »
Rebiya Khadeer – The Uighur Muslim Hero and Scapegoat
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/world/asia/07kadeer.html?_r=1&hp
Rebiya Kadeer, an exiled Uighur businesswoman and political leader, denied she was behind the protests that erupted Sunday.
Rebiya Kadeer, the exiled Uighur businesswoman and political leader, could barely contain her fury at Beijing’s characterization of her as the evil mastermind behind the deadly protests that erupted Sunday in her western Chinese homeland.
“I didn’t have anything to do with these protests, but I love my people and they love me,” she said by telephone on Monday from her office in Washington, D.C., speaking animatedly in her native tongue. “So the Chinese naturally try to blame me.”
In an outpouring of rage on Sunday, Uighurs, a Muslim group with Turkic origins, clashed with Han Chinese in Urumqi, the capital of the western region of Xinjiang. Han Chinese, who have long treated the region as a wilderness to be colonized, now account for close to half its residents, including a large majority in the capital.
“The protests are a reaction to China’s repressive policies in East Turkestan,” she said, using the name preferred by many Uighurs for the vast desert region that they once dominated.
In the four years since Ms. Kadeer, 62, was released to the United States from her prison cell in China, she has become the public face of an ethnic group that is little known in much of the world. Although her fame hardly approaches that of the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetans, Ms. Kadeer has come to personify the Uighur cause, and that status may only grow with China’s denunciations. Read the rest of this entry »
