AIDS study indicates that it arrived in USA in 1969

Aids study shows it arrived in US in 1960s – Telegraph

This is a very interesting reporting regarding the transmission of the AIDS virus from Africa and the sub Sahara regions to the USA. Initially, a Canadian airline steward was credited with the spread of HIV in the USA, however, the team of researchers from the University of Edinburgh, basing their claims on genetic analysis have shown that the probable route from Africa is through Haiti.

 

The team, which includes Andrew Rambaut at the
University of Edinburgh, based on the conclusion on genetic analyses.
The team analysed blood from five of the first Aids patients identified
in the US, all of whom were recent immigrants from Haiti. The team also
analysed genetic sequences from another 117 AIDS patients from around
the world.

 

The team used statistical methods to
investigate all the family trees that were consistent with the genetic
data. For the hypothesis that, from Africa, HIV went to the US first,
the probability is 0.003 percent — virtually nil. For the hypothesis
that HIV went from Africa first to Haiti in around 1966 and then on to
the US, the probability is 99.8 percent, almost 100 percent.

The advantage of this study is that by learning more about the genetic make-up of the various strains of HIV could help vaccine development.

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A Responsible approach to MRSA

By JEFFERSON WEAVER
Staff Writer

Health
officials hope encouraging better hygiene and following strict
protocols can prevent the MRSA virus from becoming more of a problem in
Columbus County.

Columbus Regional already has close
enforcement of hand hygiene and patient isolation rules to avoid spread
of the drug-resistant bug. The infection has been blamed for several
deaths across the country in recent weeks, and is turning up in
previously unaffected portions of the population.

Methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus, better known as MRSA or simply staph, was
previously rare outside of hospitals and nursing homes, but in recent
years the virulent strain of MRSA has begun appearing in schools,
prisons, and the general population.

Miranda
Dufour, who is in charge of Infection Control and Employee Health at
Columbus Regional, said the hospital was already on a prevention
platform for the disease, which has no vaccination of cure.

“We’ve
been monitoring it closely,” Dufour said. “That’s been the case since
2005, when we became aware this could be a growing problem.”

Community-related
MRSA, according to the state Department of Health, can be treated with
medicines. Hospital-associated MRSA, the more virulent strain, is the
one doctors are worried about.

The disease became a
major concern to health officials in the 1990s, when people with no
connection to medical facilities began showing signs of HA-MRSA.

The
variation of the disease was noticed in 2005 in North Carolina. Day
care centers and schools have been the hardest hit by the disease,
which the Centers for Disease control estimates will kill more people
than the AIDS virus next year.

MRSA infections can appear as a spider or infected insect bite.

This
changes into a “red hot pimple,” Dufour said, and may be followed by
flu-like symptoms. The disease usually causes powerful infections to
the rest of the body.

MRSA is carried by many people who never exhibit symptoms or get sick.

“A lot of people can be colonized in their skin, nose or armpits,” Dufour said, “and never show an active infection.”
The disease is spread through skin-to-skin contact, or by extended
contact with articles that carry the germ, like towels, washcloths and
razors. MRSA can also be transmitted through the handles of shopping
carts, telephones and athletic equipment.

Dufour
said medical professionals are eyeing the bug because it is appearing
in greater numbers in the general population. The hospital has taken a
strong preventative stance on the disease, Dufour said.

“We
are concerned,” she said. “MRSA has always been there, especially in
hospitals and nursing homes, but when it started moving out into other
places it became even more serious.”

The hospital already checks nursing home or long-term care patients for MRSA, Dufour said.

If
a patient tests positive for the bug – either through an active case or
by being colonized, or carrying the disease – he or she is isolated
from other patients. Staff members also wear gowns and other protective
gear whenever they treat a colonized patient.

“We also
practice strict handwashing hygiene throughout the hospital,” Dufour
said, “and we encourage anyone visiting the hospital to do the same.”

Dispensers
with alcohol-based sanitizers are set up throughout the hospital, and
some members of the staff carry individual bottles.

It’s a habit Dufour said health officials encourage for the general population, too.

“You
can get the personal size bottles almost anywhere,” she said. “There
are small ones that fit perfectly in a child’s lunchbox or bookbag, and
everyone should have some available if they go to a store or other
public place where contact is likely.”

The germ commonly turns up in infants with skin abcesses, Dufour said, and children who spend time in close quarters.

The
state Department of Health has issued special advisories on MRSA for
schools and athletic organizations, since a 17-year-old Virginia youth
contracted the disease while playing high school sports.

Several members of a North Carolina high school team were also infected recently and are being treated.
Health clubs and gyms have also been put on notice, Dufour said,
because the germ can be spread through sweat from an infected person.

Others
at risk are people with poor general hygiene, anyone who lives in a
confined space, intravenous drug users, and people with chronic
illnesses such as renal failure or diabetes.

“If you’re in generally good health, “ Dufour said, “just keep an eye on anything suspicious.”

While there is no antibiotic that can treat the disease, Dufour said there is a simple way to prevent it.

“Good
handwashing hygiene is the best preventative,” she said. “Washing your
hands in warm soapy water for 15 to 20 seconds will eliminate much of
the danger.”

Dufour said there has been a rise in calls
to area doctors about the disease, especially from concerned parents
and people who notice insect bites.

“Not every bite or
pimple is MRSA,” Dufour said. Keep any suspicious wound clean, dry and
covered, Dufour said, and if there is no improvement in a few days,
“call your doctor.”

The wound will then be drained and
the infection tested to determine if the patient has staph, Dufour
said. Sometimes the problem can be treated with draining by a doctor.

The disease has historically struck older people, Dufour said, but the
new strain is increasingly taking aim at young people, especially
children.

To
avoid spreading the disease, the hospital has also asked that parents
not allow young children to crawl into hospital beds with patients.

“You
hate to have to say something like that,” Dufour said, “but if a person
is infected, and a little one crawls into bed with grandma – then you
have two infected people, not just one.”

Both the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the state Department of Health have set up a special website on MRSA.

For more on diagnosing and preventing the spread of the disease, go to
the state site at www.epi.state.nc.us/epi/gcdc/ca_mrsa, or the federal
site at www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dhqp/ar_mrsa_ca_public.html.

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Freedom of Speech denied at Emory U

Gateway Pundit has a good article on the manner in which left wing students and their Muslim “friends” destroyed the right to freedom of speech.

You can read about it here:

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4 infants died – the police case against the mother collapses because of inadmissible evidence

Has Justice been served for this mother, who had 4 children and lost all of them for an unknown reason?

 

CAROL Matthey entered the Supreme Court yesterday charged with murdering her four small children, one by one, over five years.

Police said she deliberately suffocated them, partly in order to sustain her troubled relationship with her husband, Stephen Matthey, the children’s father.

But yesterday, the criminal case against Mrs Matthey, who has always denied she harmed her children, collapsed.

Fifteen minutes after she arrived, Mrs Matthey left the court free, cheerfully accepting congratulations. In an extraordinary end to one of the most dramatic cases in Victorian legal history, prosecutors dropped the charges because much of the evidence gathered against her was ruled inadmissible.

A case that involved a three-year police investigation, thousands of pages of statements and 160 witnesses — and a case that dominated four years of Carol Matthey’s life — was suddenly over before it reached trial.

After she left the court, Mrs Matthey walked along William Street smiling, declining to answer reporters’ questions until this one: “Are you not guilty, Carol?”

“No,” she said firmly.

The reporter pointed out the double negative and asked for clarification. Did she mean she was innocent? “Yes,” she said, chuckling, amused at the misunderstanding. Then she walked off the public stage and into the rest of her life.

The Supreme Court case against Mrs Matthey ended as a result of pre-trial hearings before Justice John Coldrey. In a complex 94-page judgement on October 12, he found most of the proposed evidence inadmissible under the law.

In legal terms, this is not an acquittal. A defendant against whom charges are withdrawn is not protected by double jeopardy and, theoretically, faces the prospect of another trial if new evidence emerges.

Mrs Matthey, 27, of Geelong, lost four children between 1998 and 2003. Jacob was seven months old, Chloe nine weeks old, Joshua three months and Shania three years and four months. At her committal hearing in March 2006, Mrs Matthey’s defence argued there was no physical evidence of harm done to any of the children. Her lawyers said it was possible the children shared an as-yet-undiscovered gene that caused a medical condition, such as a fatal cardiac arrhythmia, that led to their deaths.

Police yesterday declined to comment. The acting director of public prosecutions, Jeremy Rapke, QC, said the case was irreparably damaged when the judge deemed inadmissible much of the medical evidence.

Initially, Jacob and Chloe Matthey were found to have died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and Joshua of klebsiella septicaemia. A police investigation began after the death of Shania, who was too old to have died of SIDS, and for whom no cause of death could be found. At the committal hearing, experts acknowledged SIDS was a “diagnosis of exclusion” — the cause of death used for babies when no other cause can be found. They said there were often no forensic clues that would differentiate natural SIDS from deliberate suffocation.

This left much of the expert medical evidence at the committal heated and contradictory. Four local forensic pathologists strongly argued the autopsies revealed no scientific evidence of harm to any of the children.

But a pediatrician from South Australia who specialized in SIDS, Dr Susan Beal, and a forensic pediatric pathologist from the US, Dr Janice Ophoven, were equally vehement homicide was the most likely explanation.

They argued that “scientific” evidence included the lack of risk factors for SIDS in some of the children; the rarity of four such deaths in one family; the troubled marriage; and the fact that the children had experienced “ALTEs” — apparent life-threatening episodes in which they stopped breathing or were found unconscious.

Dr Beal said: “ALTEs are not a predictor for SIDS; they’re a predictor for (homicide).”

Justice Coldrey ruled out most of the evidence of these two witnesses.

The conflict between the experts meant the Crown case relied on other evidence, such as Mrs Matthey’s relationship with her husband and children.

Justice Coldrey said the Crown had submitted that, particularly at times of ALTEs or deaths among the children, the marriage was under severe strain.

“Moreover, it is asserted that the relationship of Mrs Matthey to her children, evinced by unwanted and unplanned pregnancies, mediocre parenting and indifference to their deaths, would enable a jury to infer they were the unfortunate pawns in this strategy to bolster her marital situation,” he wrote.

Justice Coldrey found there was no discernible link between the timing of marital crises and the ALTEs or the deaths: “There is no foundation for the contention that the killings were designed to win back Stephen Matthey’s love and affection.”

While there was evidence of poor mothering, the judge wrote, other reports painted a picture of a woman “who was a concerned, caring and loving mother during the children’s lives, and a distressed and grieving one when they died”.

Mrs Matthey’s lawyer, Paul Lacava, SC, said there were no winners in the case. “Mrs Matthey and her husband have lost their children and their sadness is profound and ongoing.

 

I find it very strange that it used to be accepted if one baby died from SIDS then there was a chance that further babies could die from SIDS, yet these two women “experts” on a mission claim that it is impossible and that the deaths must be homicide. If this mother did in fact kill her children, then both of these “experts” have done a lot of harm to the prosecution case. The local pathologists, who had more than likely examined the bodies of the babies indicated that there was no scientific evidence of harm being done to the children. Why then should the Prosecution be allowed to build a case based upon the evidence of “experts” who had not performed any forensic pathology on the children. The Judge did the right thing striking down the charges. Carol Matthey does not walk away from the court as a totally free woman, because she could be charged again, but at least justice is seen to be done when a case that is not based upon fact, but upon “experts with a mission” has been struck down because of the lack of real evidence that would lead to a conviction.

What kind of psychological problems for these children in the future?

A picture can paint a thousand words, and the pictures of these innocent babies paints a rather horrible story. From a very young age they are being taught to hate others. It is hard to imagine the kind of psychological problems that these children will have if they ever make it into adult hood. With the kind of hatred that is being built up within them, they are facing a very bleak future. This is what is so very rotten about the condition of the Islamist Jihadis in our society. How can any decent human being support this kind of brainwashing of the innocent? Dr. Sanity offers the following perspective

From a wider perspective, though, what Steyn is talking about is the politicization of children; i.e., the use of children to advance a political or ideological agenda. This sort of child abuse is going on on a number of levels, both in Western culture and in Middle Eastern culture. Specifically, I want to focus on the hyper-sexualization of children in the West, and the concomitant hyper-”aggressivization” of children in the Arab/Islamic world.

A recent search of the headlines will give us plenty to ponder on the sexualization being waged in the West. Consider this. And this. and this. In Norway: this Or how about this?

What does any of the above represent, except an all-out assault on the sexual identity and genitalia of today’s children. Oh, don’t bother to tell me this is all done with the best of intentions…quite frankly, I’m rather sick of hearing that particular line.
Don’t these do-gooders ever consider the long-term consequences of their actions? Or is it just enough for them to feel in the moment oh-so-good about what wonderful, modern, tolerant, progressive people they are? They will conveniently forget that it was their policies and their agenda when the sexual chickens come home to roost (imagine an entire society of Brittainys and Madonnas and their male equivalents).

Meanwhile their socialist counterparts in the Middle East really have perfected a way to accomplish what the Stark Raving Mad congressman from Maine insinuated (i.e., “President Bush wants to breed a generation of sickly uninsured children in order to send them to Iraq to stagger round the Sunni Triangle, weak and spindly and emaciated and rickets-stricken, to get their heads blown off)–with one little creative modification!

When they blow their little heads off, they will be dying to blow yours off, too. These jihadi kids don’t draw guns and play as a means of discharging youthful aggressive impulses on the road to civilized behavior; they shoot them for real, at real human targets and are rewarded according to how much they are able to express the uncivilized cultural hatred that motivates the adults in their society. Instead of learning civilized behavior, they learn to project their hatred onto Jews and Christians. This is a violent video “game” in real life.

Do you imagine there is not a difference between fantasy play (which teaches a child how to control impulses and tame his or her inner monsters in the safety of fantasy) and participating in real-life violence, brutality or sex (which gives tacit permission and actively encourages the child to become his or her inner monsters) ?

If you are unable to distinguish the difference, then you must be a member of the so-called “reality-based” community who seem to specialize in utopian fantasies where human aggression has been magically eliminated from the species, and we all “make love, not war” in some utopian meadow of the not-too-distant future.
Good luck with that.

Instead of channeling human aggression and sexuality into societally productive avenues that benefit both individuals and cultures in which they live, we are witness to the spectacle of the political left gleefully encouraging and supporting dysfunctional sexuality that reeks of entitlement, irresponsibility, and perversity. Their moral counterparts in the “religion of peace”, channel it directly into hatred and religious fanatacism.

Frequent visitors to this blog might recall that I have written quite a bit about psychological defense mechanisms (and here, for example) which operate unconsciously for the most part; and that they exist in a spectrum from immature to mature. On the immature end we have psychotic denial and ordinary denial (which children engage in frequently). As they mature, ordinary denial will morph into psychological repression (a neurotic, lower level psychological defense) and with maturity, the individual may evolve into using a process of sublimation, one of the most mature defenses, to manage any inappropriate sexual or aggressive impulses.

Contrary to the usual marxist propaganda, it is not capitalism that is encourages the use of immature psychological defenses, but life itself. But, it is capitalism and the capitalist system that offer a healthy channel for the redirection of negative psychic energy into something positive for both the individual and the group at large.

Something, I might add, that marxism, socialism and all its malignant variants completely fail to do. In fact, what they encourage are the use of unhealthy defenses (acting out, reaction formation, denial, projection, displacement to name a few) which, because such defenses are suboptimal and even self-defeating in the long-run, do nothing to improve the lot of either the society at large, or the individual unlucky enough to be living in it.

Societies, like individuals, can adopt mature defenses and deal with reality; or they can deny reality and look elsewhere for the source of their problems. Many countries, like individuals, prefer to put the blame for their own failures onto an outside source, since that is safer for the self-image. In order to maintain the fiction that their problems are caused externally, a group or country or culture needs to indoctrinate children at the earliest age possible in order to make sure that their cognitive faculties are short-circuited and won’t question the ideology or dogma.

A “healthy” country, like a healthy individual will utilize mature defenses to cope with their aggressive and/or sexual impulses. They are not afraid of their aggressive impulses because those impulses are reigned in by reason and not indulged in lightly. They are able to find pleasure and satisfaction in their sexual impusles, not by indiscriminantly indulging in every pleasurable urge or whim, but by harnessing that sexuality to values that promote true intimacy and happiness.

Healthy societies do not encourage either sexual or aggressive (i.e. violent) acting out in their children. On the contrary, healthy societies encourage responsible sexual behavior and appropriate and realistic compromise and accommodation of others.
Sex and aggression are very closely connected. According to Freudian theory, all behavior can be thought of as motivated by a desire to feel pleasure. That motivation is organized and directed by two instincts: sexuality (Eros), and aggression (Thanatos). Freudian psychology in its earliest incarnations was almost obsessively preoccupied with sex. This is because Freud himself lived in a puritanical Victorian-era society and was reacting against the extreme prudishness of the age. The psychological symptoms Freud saw in his practice and described so brilliantly were to be expected in a society that ruthlessly repressed sex.

One does not need to wonder what kind of symptoms are to be expected in a society that, instead of repressing it, glorifies it and indoctrinates its children into sexual pleasures without concomitantly teaching them about personal responsibility or that there are real world consequences to one’s behavior (something that can only be learned with maturity).

In my profession, we have been dealing with these “counterfeiting” symptoms since the “sexual revolution” peaked in the middle of the last century. Nothing like a little Utopian Marxism-gone-berserk to really alienate people from themselves, destroy interpersonal relationships and produce a society that joyfully celebrates sex without personal intimacy for the glorification of the state.

Here in the West, we have glorified one instinct (sex) while ruthlessly suppressing the other (aggression)
Meanwhile, children on the other side of the world are indoctrinated into violence without benefit of conscience, as their religion and culture ruthless suppress sex and glorify aggression and violence in the name of god.

Study finds that too much cannabis can worsen pain

Too much cannabis ‘worsens pain’

 

Smoking large amounts of cannabis for therapeutic reasons may increase rather than reduce pain, a US study suggests.

The pain-relieving qualities of cannabis have long been hailed, and several countries have made it available for medicinal purposes.

But quantity is key, according to the study in the journal Anesthesiology.

University of California researchers found moderate use had the greatest impact on pain in 15 volunteers, while large doses actually made pain worse.

The team recruited 15 healthy volunteers, in whom pain was induced by injecting capsaicin – the “hot” chemical found in chili peppers – under their skin.

They were then given cannabis to smoke. The strength of the dose was determined by the tetrahydrocannabinol content, which is the main active chemical in cannabis.

Some of the volunteers were given a placebo.

High, but in pain

Five minutes after smoking the drug, none of the doses had any effect on the pain felt.

But 45 minutes later, those who had smoked the moderate dose said their pain was much better, while those who consumed high doses said it had got worse.

They did, however, feel “higher” than counterparts who had taken moderate doses.

Dr Mark Wallace, the lead researcher, said the findings could have implications for the way medicinal cannabis was offered, both in pure and drug form.

Some experts are concerned that results on healthy volunteers could not be translated into how cannabis works in the bodies of those with cancer or multiple sclerosis, for whom the drug is increasingly seen as a potential form of pain relief.

Dr Laura Bell, of the MS Society, said: “Many people with MS report benefits to symptoms such as pain from taking cannabis, however studies to date on the effects of cannabis on pain are small and difficult to draw firm conclusions from.

“We would be interested to see the results from larger scale studies focused on people with MS.”

MRI urged for women at high risk of cancer

MRI urged for women at high risk of cancer – National – theage.com.au

Simone Filip is only 34, she has two sons, and has been diagnosed with breast cancer twice. This is an indication that for this young woman the cancer is genetic.

There is a real need for younger women who are in the high risk category to have annual check ups in order to detect any cancer when it is at a very early stage. So far Simone has survived both of her cancer scares, but if she is denied the opportunity to have frequent MRI check ups because of government red tape then her outlook could become quite grim.

The problem with breast cancer is that the earlier the diagnosis, then the more aggressive is the cancer. It is, I believe something that has been ignored for too long and it is because it is ignored that too many young women are dying as a result of the disease.

Already we have seen the deaths of some very young actresses from this disease, and Belinda Emmett was only the latest, and by no means the first one who was relatively young. She had a high enough profile to be able to bring the MSM on board to help spread the word that breast cancer also kills women under 40, not just over 50s.

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French Parliament adopts DNA Bill

A new immigration bill, introducing possible DNA tests for foreigners who want to join “relatives” already in France has been adopted by the parliament.

Supporters of the Bill say that it will speed up the process for genuine applicants and cite similar laws in other European nations, but the critics claim that the law is racists and question the use of genetics as a basis for citizenship.

How typical of the left to not see the wood for the trees. If there are DNA tests, then this gives the authorities a greater opportunity to monitor potential terrorists from contries such as the Sudan, Morocco, Nigeria and Algeria. It gives the authorities the opportunity to check the DNA of the person against the DNA of wanted and known offenders (whether for terrorist acts or otherwise).

Strict measure do need to be adopted against all foreigners if there is going to be any chance of preventing a terrorist disaster on the scale of the bombing of the New York World Trade Centre. I do not think that any nation can afford to continue with this pussy footing around that we have seen wherever the looney left is left in control of government and immigration policy. This is not about racism, since Islam is not a race, neither is Christian a race, it is about preventing criminals from entering into a European nation.

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How people seeking to tell the truth are treated on campus

Speaker Nonie Darwish Says Female Students Are ?Hamas Trained?

Robert Stacy McCain blogging at The Washington Time?s Fishwrap sends this update on Nonie Darwish.

Nonie Darwish is an Arab-American writer and public speaker. She is the author of the book Now they Call Me Infidel; Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel and the War on Terror. Nonie’s message is not about disloyalty but love for her culture of origin. She blames Arab leadership and the media for the endless rage and violence of the Arab street.
Phyllis Chesler describes how Nonie Darwish was treated by the the crowd at Wellesley College last week during her talk at Pajamas Media:

Last week, on October 18, 2007, our hero Darwish spoke at the all-female Wellesley College as the guest of Hillel on campus. She was not treated as a hero; then again, maybe she was, maybe her treatment is precisely how heroes are greeted on American campuses today.
About 80-100 students came. Far more Muslim than Jewish students came and ?so many? of the Muslim girls were wearing head-scarves.
According to Darwish, the female students in head-scarves did the following: As she spoke, they made exaggerated, ?mean girl? faces at her. They rolled their eyes, practiced ?disbelieving? facial expressions?did everything but stick out their tongues. And they continued to talk to each other in loud whispers while Darwish spoke: ?How can she tell such lies!? ?I was never, ever indoctrinated against Jews!? ?Can you believe what she is saying?? ?We do not call Jews pigs and apes, how can she lie about her own people??
In addition to the ?mean girl? faces and the continual loud whispering, one by one, at least four to five head-scarved girls, got up to leave the room during Darwish?s speech. This meant that each girl took two minutes to move to the end of her row, physically causing the other students to get up or twist aside, causing the entire room to look at the departing student, not at their invited guest?and then each girl did precisely the same thing when she returned two minutes later, presumably from a bathroom break.
They quadruple-teamed Darwish and did not stop until Darwish ended her lecture. Twenty to thirty minutes of soft-core, well-choreographed, goon squad behavior. ?They are Hamas-trained? says Darwish.
?And all the while,? Darwish says, ?the Jewish students cringed and cowered, so afraid that they might have hurt Muslim feelings. (Or rather, that the Muslims might physically hurt them afterwards. According to Darwish, one Jewish student told her that ?she ?was locking her door. I am scared.?)
She is probably right to be. During the Question and Answer period, many of the head-scarved students expressed calculated, injured outrage. ?How dare (Hillel) bring this woman to our campus? How dare she insult Islam, tell lies about Islam? etc. ?We are free under Islam, how can she deny this??
?Darwish concludes: ?Muslim girls like these are like gangsters. They know more about their rights in America than the Jewish girls do. The Muslim girls all have a chip on their shoulders.?
And then she is silent. Softly, she says: ?We are fighting an avalanche. We are too few. I am frightened by my culture of origin. I am scared of my own people.?

Nonie Darwish is speaking tonight at UC Berkeley. Andrew Marcus is filming the event and blogger Megan Sego from California Patriot Blog is in attendance.
This is cross-posted at Incorrect U.

Denmark grants asylum to Eritrean Christian.

BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Asylum for Eritrean gospel singer
She does not belong to one of the 4 recognized religious groups, but she belongs to the Evangelical Rema church. Helen Berhane is a Gospel singer and she was arrested in 2004 because she belongs to what is termed in Eritrea as an underground and illegal Church. After a lot of pressure was put on the Eritrean government to obtain her release, Helen Berhane escaped to Khartoum in the Sudan.
What is extraordinary about this story is that Helen Berhane and her daughter Eva applied for asylum in the UK in January, but after 7 months of waiting no decision had been made. Yet, it took the Danish officials one month to accept that Helen and Eva were genuine refugees.
After reading about the torture that Helen and thousands like her experienced in yet another Muslim country where there is such “tolerance” for Christians, one has to wonder what is wrong with the British officials. Helen has to use a wheel chair because of her injuries. This is totally scandalous and against all human rights. Here is some more of the story as posted by the BBCL

An Eritrean Christian gospel singer who was tortured and detained without charge for two years in her homeland has been granted asylum in Denmark.

Helen Berhane was imprisoned inside a metal shipping container and beaten in an effort to make her recant her faith.

Freed in December 2006, she took refuge in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, before being granted asylum.

Ms Berhane uses a wheelchair because of severe injuries to her legs and feet sustained in prison beatings.

More than 90% of Eritreans belong to one of four recognised religions – Orthodox, Catholic and Lutheran Churches and Islam.

All other religions were outlawed by a government decree passed in May 2001, though Jehovah’s Witnesses had been denied their rights as Eritrean citizens as early as 1994.

Helen Berhane is a member of the unregistered Rema Church and had just released a cassette of gospel music when she was arrested in the Eritrean capital on 13 May 2004.

She was one of an estimated 2,000 members of illegal evangelical church groups in Eritrea who have been arrested in recent years, according to the human rights group Amnesty International.

Arbitrary detention

After an international campaign, she was released in December 2006 and fled with her sister to Sudan, fearing she could be killed to cover up what had happened to her at the Mai Serwa prison camp near Asmara.

Among the tortures she endured was the infamous “helicopter” position, in which the prisoner is placed face down with arms and legs tied behind the back.

Her account of the cruel and inhumane treatment she suffered is echoed by the testimony of hundreds of others persecuted for their religious beliefs.

Prisoners say they are routinely subjected to extremes of heat and cold, denied water and sanitation, according to testimony collected from exiles by Release Eritrea, an organisation that campaigns for the rights of religious minorities.

Ms Berhane’s daughter, Eva, who joined her in Khartoum, accompanied her to Copenhagen where the two were greeted by campaigners and well-wishers on Friday.

Dr Berhane Asmelash, Director of Release Eritrea, said: “We are relieved that Helen and Eva are finally safe and would like to thank everyone who has supported them.”

“We hope that Helen will now have the peace and space to recover her health and rebuild her life.”

Initially Helen Berhane applied to the United Kingdom for asylum and was interviewed by immigration officials at the British High Commission in Khartoum in January 2007.

Seven months later, with no decision on her case by the British, Ms Berhane sought help from Denmark which took one month to determine that she was a genuine asylum seeker.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide’s Chief Executive, Mervyn Thomas, said: “We are thrilled that Helen has now finally found refuge for herself and her daughter after so many years of suffering.”

“We cannot forget, however, that 2000 other Christians still languish in Eritrean detention centres simply for holding on to their faith,” Mr Thomas said.