The deficit is 22 percent of the $85 billion general fund budget the governor signed last July for the fiscal year that ended in June, highlighting how the steep drop in California’s revenue due to recession, the housing slump, financial market turmoil and high unemployment have slashed its all-important personal income tax collection.

In the declaration, Schwarzenegger ordered three days off without pay per month beginning in August for tens of thousands of state employees to preserve the state’s cash to pay its debt, and for essential services.

California’s budget is five weeks overdue, joining New York among big states with spending plans yet to be approved, and Schwarzenegger and top lawmakers are at an impasse over how to balance the state’s books.

Analysts say it could be several more weeks before the Republican governor and leaders of the Democrat-led legislature reach an agreement, a delay that threatens to lower the state’s already weak credit rating, now hovering just a few notches above “junk” status.

“Without a budget in place that addresses our $19 billion budget deficit, every day of delay brings California closer to a fiscal meltdown,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement.

“Our cash situation leaves me no choice but to once again furlough state workers until the legislature produces a budget I can sign,” he wrote.

Schwarzenegger’s declaration noted the state’s government is projected to run out of cash no later than October should its budget stalemate persist, as expected.

California has a long history of nasty and lengthy budget battles.

Last year, the fight over a spending plan dragged on so long the state controller had to issue IOUs instead of payments to vendors to conserve money for priority payments, including payments for education programs and for investors holding the state’s bonds.

IOUs AS EARLY AS NEXT MONTH

Schwarzenegger’s declaration noted State Controller John Chiang has said he could be forced to issue IOUs as early as next month because of the budget impasse.

Schwarzenegger has proposed slashing spending to balance the state’s books, an approach rejected by Democratic lawmakers. Their leaders in the state Senate and Assembly are trying to draft a joint plan likely to include proposals for tax increases to rival the governor’s budget plan.

By ordering furloughs, which he also did last year, Schwarzenegger is bringing pressure on state employee unions allied with Democratic lawmakers on the heels of losing a courtroom battle to cut state employees’ pay to the federal minimum wage to bolster the state’s finances.

Schwarzenegger’s new furlough order was instantly condemned by labor officials as a political ploy.

“To once again force state employees to take unpaid furloughs is just another punitive measure by Governor Schwarzenegger because he couldn’t impose minimum wage,” said Patty Velez, president of the California Association of Professional Scientists.

The declaration exempted state employee bargaining units that recently agreed with Schwarzenegger’s administration to new contracts that include reduced pension benefits.

Schwarzenegger has said he will only sign a budget agreement if it includes an overhaul of the state’s public pension system, which includes the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the biggest U.S. public pension fund, which he says poses one of California’s greatest financial challenges going forward.

Schwarzenegger clearly has no qualms in the final months of his final term about pressuring lawmakers through the wallets of one their top constituencies, said Pete Peterson, executive director at the Davenport Institute at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy.

“It’s an indirect play,” he said. ” … these past few months there has be

This post was submitted by Todd Eastham/reuters.

                          

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China was furious after it was ambushed at Asia’s top security forum by a discussion of sensitive territorial claims in the South China Sea, an area rich in energy and key for shipping.

Beijing had kept the South China Sea off the agenda of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) for a decade and a half. But last week in a meeting in Hanoi, 12 of the 27 members — including some with no direct stake in the territorial disputes — raised maritime issues.

An angry summary of the meeting was posted on the Foreign Ministry’s website on Sunday evening, eschewing usually opaque diplomatic language to accuse U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of a barely disguised assault on Chinese interests.

“As expected, the U.S. side chose to ignore China’s advice and played up the issue at the meeting,” the statement said.

“The seemingly impartial remarks (by Clinton) were in effect an attack on China and were designed to give the international community a wrong impression that the situation in the South China Sea is a cause for grave concern.”

The statement was repeated the next day in English, ensuring maximum overseas readership for the broadside, and angry editorials in state-run media have also followed. Experts say the fury is not just for show, and threatens already tense ties.

“China is angry. This is the first public U.S. interference over the South China Sea, which the Foreign Ministry sees as an issue between China and Southeast Asian countries,” said Shi Yinhong, International Security professor at Renmin University.

“I think this is quite serious because it dramatically expands the space for disputes between China and the U.S.”

Relations between Beijing and Washington have been getting back on an even keel after a disastrous start to the year, marred by spats over everything from Tibet, self-ruled Taiwan and trade and the value of China’s currency.

But military ties in particular have been slow to recover, and the latest dispute comes hot on the heels of joint U.S.-South Korean military drills in seas near China, directed at North Korea but also criticized repeatedly by Beijing.

“The Obama administration must clearly understand: are they prepared to fully open up an era of friction with China? If they are not then they are certainly giving the impression that they are,” the state-owned but populist Global Times tabloid quoted National Defense University professor Han Xudong saying.

DIVIDE AND CONQUER

Clinton’s speech marked the public demise of Washington’s old hands-off approach to the South China Sea, though it was foreshadowed in speeches by the U.S. military officials and diplomats who have long feared U.S. strategic interests in the area were being eroded.

China has decades-old disputes with Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Vietnam over boundaries in the South China Sea, an area key for shipping and possibly rich in oil and gas.

Beijing has for years insisted on handling the disputes — which are serious enough to have sparked sometimes deadly naval clashes — on a one-on-one basis rather than multilaterally, a strategy some have described as “divide and conquer”.

China’s growing confidence, bolstered of late by the relative ease with which it has ridden out the global financial crisis, has led to more assertiveness internationally.

“Some of (the Southeast Asian claimants) mention that the Chinese have gotten much tougher on them in recent months on the issue,” said David Shambaugh, director of the China Policy Program at the George Washington University in Washington.

“I was told by a high-level Singaporean official in May that China has warned them all not to discuss the disputed island even among each other,” he added.

Chinese media even warned fellow Asians after the meeting about embracing the United States too fast, saying they could be sacrificing their interests to a selfish outside power.

“Big countries from other regions…should make efforts to create good external conditions for countries in the region to solve the issue through peaceful negotiations, instead of stirring up trouble and sowing discord in the South China Sea,” the China News Service said in an opinion piece.

NO TURNING BACK

The multilateral discussion of the South China Sea was seen first and foremost as a victory for hard-lobbying Vietnamese diplomats, who are more interested in looking for allies than Asian solidarity. They often complain of Chinese harassment of Vietnamese fishermen in disputed waters and recently put in an order for six submarines.

For Washington, staking out a position on the South China Sea dispute is more of a gamble.

It allows the Pentagon to reassert U.S. influence in a distant but vital area. However, it does so with no clearly defined goal and is up against a resolute and patient Beijing.

“China won’t back down from its position, which it has held for a long time,” said Ian Storey, a fellow at the Singapore Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

“It’s harder for the U.S. though, because now they have said they want to facilitate these talks, what happens next?… It’s all tied up with the rise of China’s navy and growing disquiet within the Pentagon about the growth of that navy.”

Even if a compromise solution can be reached sometime soon, it is unlikely to be a permanent one.

“Both governments are not willing to let this kind of high tension last a long time, so maybe several weeks later we can expect that they will take some action to control the developing of this kind of dispute,” Shi said, adding a grim prediction.

“The disputes will be still there and will be temporarily under control, and then temporarily break out, and this will make Sino-U.S. relations more complicated in the future.”

This post was submitted by Reuters.

                          

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Jakarta.

From January to July, there were 28 cases of religious freedom violations by “intolerant groups targeting Christians,” up from 17 for the whole of 2008 and 18 in 2009, the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace said in a report.

Based on reports by churches and the media, the violations — mostly by radical Muslim groups — include forced closure of churches, revocation and delays in issuing building permits, and attacks such as torching and damaging churches, the institute said.

“These incidents are a breach of law and human rights. The President and the government have been very silent on this matter and have not provided enough protection to citizens,” Setara’s deputy chief Bonar Tigor Naipospos said.

“The attackers have become bolder as law enforcement is weak. We can’t let the incidents continue as peace in the country will be jeopardized,” he added.

The attacks, which mostly took place in Jakarta and West Java province, have made Christians “scared and anxious,” said Parasian Hutasoit, spokesman for Huria Christian Protestant Batak Church Filadelfia.

His church in Bekasi, an outer suburb of Jakarta, was forced to close in January after Muslim residents held protests there, saying it was built illegally.

“More than a hundred came to the church and demanded we shut down. We felt intimidated and discriminated against. We just want a place to practise our faith in peace,” he said.

Indonesian lawmakers in June demanded the government outlaw a violent Islamist vigilante group that has threatened “war” against Christians in Jakarta and urged mosques to set up militia forces.

The Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) — a private militia with a self-appointed mission to protect “Islamic” values in the secular country — urged Bekasi authorities to introduce Islamic Shariah law and warned they would attack Christians unless the “Christianization” ceased.

Observers have said communal tensions could erupt into violence in Indonesia, a constitutionally secular country of 240 million people, 90 percent of whom are Muslim.

This post was submitted by Agence France-Presse/jktglobe.

                          

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“We had already erected steel pillars and the base framework for our mosque when members of certain communities began to protest its construction. The Bogor administration backed them, and requested us to stop building the mosque so that there would be peace in Bogor,” Ahmadiyah spokesman Mubarik told the Jakarta Globe on Sunday.

Mubarik said the group ceased construction, but hundreds of public order officers in Bogor on July 12 demolished the foundations to make sure the mosque would not be completed.

Residents had objected to the plan to build the mosque in Cisaladah village, claiming it violated a 2006 decree by the ministries of religious affairs and home affairs on the establishment of houses of worship, which require the approval of local residents before they can be built.

The Ahmadiyah case is but one in a number of incidents targeting minority religions in Bogor, a city that sits just outside Jakarta. But it is not just happening in Bogor. The past year has seen churches closed, Christian events raided and a call to bring a city’s bylaws in line with Shariah law — all in cities neighboring the country’s capital.

Radicalizing the Suburbs

The Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace, a human rights organization, says what is happening in Bogor is part of a radicalization phenomenon in suburban regions, including neighboring Bekasi and Tangerang.

“When these attacks were becoming frequent in 2007, we assumed that they were the workings of the PKS [Prosperous Justice Party, an Islam-based political party],” said Ismail Hasani, a Setara researcher.

“But then we studied it more and we learned it was something else. Have you heard of the concept ‘people from the villages besieging cities?’ ”

According to Setara’s research, at least 291 acts of religious violence occurred last year across 12 provinces — West Java had the highest number with 57 incidents, followed by Jakarta with 38. Both Bogor and Bekasi are within West Java.

“These incidents illustrate the political motives of certain organizations to gain supporters in suburban regions bordering Jakarta,” Ismail said. “These mass organizations are frequently used for political reasons. For instance, approaching regional elections, mass organizations are used to win more votes.”

The destruction of the planned Ahmadiyah mosque stemmed from a promise made by a district head in Bogor prior to his election.

Theophilus Bela, secretary general of Indonesian Committee of Religions for Peace, said freedom to worship was being restricted more openly with help from local governments.

“Building permits are an excuse here to shut down churches or to freeze prayer services in homes,” Theo told the Globe.

“Christians are of many types, including Pentacostal, the Huria Christian Protestants, Catholics and many others. The government must understand this that each religion has sects and each has a different need. They must be accommodated.”

Aside from the characteristics of the local governments, attitudes among residents in these suburbs may also help explain why hard-line groups thrive there.

The Rev. Palti Panjaitan from HKBP (Batak Christian Protestant Church) Filadelfia, whose permit was denied by the government because residents rejected it, claimed that local Islamic leaders told residents they would not receive religious services unless they opposed the church.

“The local residents are mostly field workers and elementary school graduates; they got intimidated easily,” he said.

A Bekasi resident who lives near the proposed site of the HKBP Filadelfia church told the Globe she did not object to a church being built there, “as long as they did not try to Christianize our children.”

The changing demographics of these cities could also play a part. Palti acknowledged that his congregation members were all migrants from North Sumatra who moved to Bekasi starting in the 1980s.

“Our population grew, as Bekasi is in the outskirts of Jakarta and there are a lot of factories in the area where most people work,” he said.

Johny Nelson Simanjuntak, a commissioner for monitoring and investigations at the National Commission for Human Rights (Komnas HAM), said a combination of factors could be contributing to radicalization.

“There is a lack of critical thinking and even weaker law enforcement in these areas. It is growing like an epidemic,” he told the Globe.

Weak Government Response

Regardless of the reasons behind this phenomenon, many are worried over the apparent lack of action to address it.

“The result of the recent congress in Bekasi is a big threat to the nation. That is open provocation,” Johny said. He was referring to a recent conservative Islamic congress that discussed a plan to bring Bekasi more in line with its interpretation of Islam.

The congress also called for the creation of a militant youth group within each mosque to fight the ongoing “Christianization” of the city.

Johny added that Komnas HAM had received requests for mediation from several congregations whose churches had been shut down or had building permits rejected. The most recent to be denied was GKI Yasmin church in Bogor.

“So far we still haven’t heard any response from Bogor’s mayor, but apparently the Bogor Police are insisting on investigating the church for forging residents’ signatures, even though some residents have admitted that they retracted their approval under intimidation,” Johny said.

The problem with not reining in hard-line groups is that the newly converted are often more radical and conservative than those who have studied the religion for a long period, extremism expert Noor Huda Ismail said.

“Those people used to be drunkards and thugs and they never knew how it felt being a minority,” he said.

Noor Huda added that moderate Islamic organizations such as the Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah — the largest Islamic organizations in Indonesia — were overwhelmed by their own size and out of touch with their rank and file.

“This void was then filled by FPI [Islamic Defenders Front] and other similar organizations,” Noor Huda said.

Habib Salim bin Umar Alatas, FPI’s Jakarta leader, defended the group by saying it did not act rashly. On the closure of churches, Habib Salim said that the FPI would look at the permits along with reactions of locals in the neighborhoods.

“We do not act blindly. We act on information and we report to local authorities. After informing local authorities, if they still don’t do anything, then we will,” Habib Salim said, adding that the FPI’s conduct in the field was a warning to the government for neglecting the people’s demands.

“There is just no excuse for the Ahmadiyahs because it is our commitment to disband the Ahmadiyahs. Don’t say we are against churches. Near our headquarters in Petamburan, West Jakarta, there is a Bethel Church. We live in harmony with those churchgoers.”

But Robin Hutasoit, who attends HKBP Pondok Timur Indah in Bekasi, which was locked down in June, said he had not observed this reported harmony.

“When I first moved to Bekasi in 2006, this church had been attacked by an unidentified group of people. We were praying, and they were throwing stones,” Robin told the Globe.

He said that he had never experienced that sort of “primitive behavior” when he was living in North Jakarta.

“I lived as neighbors with people of different religions in Tanjung Priok [North Jakarta]. I have never faced a problem like now I face in Bekasi. We could pray in peace in Priok.”

Anti-Christian Actions, January to June 2010

Jan. 3: 300 people from an unidentified group close access to the HKBP Filadelfia Church in Bekasi over absence of a building permit.

Feb. 5: HKBP Church in Karawang Timur, West Java, sealed forcibly due to absence of permit.

Feb. 7: 100 people protest outside the Pondok Timur Indah Church in Bekasi, saying it is not a house of worship.

Feb. 15: A mass demonstration involving hardline Islamic groups shuts down the Galileo Church in Bekasi, saying that its presence was making locals restless.

Feb. 28: A forum of subdistrict leaders demands the Pondok Timur Indah church in Bekasi stop its activities.

Mar. 11: The Bogor administration, accompanied by members of the Indonesian Muslim Communication Forum, seals off the GKI Yasmin Church after revoking its permit, on account of locals feeling restless.

Apr. 4: Subdistrict chief and police chief of Parung in Bogor warn churchgoers of St. Joannes Baptista Catholic Church to stop its religious activities because locals did not want Good Friday to be celebrated.

Apr. 27: An arson attack occurs on a resort project owned by Christian education foundation BPK Penabur.

Jun. 20: Pondok Timur Indah church in Bekasi is sealed off.

This post was submitted by Indonesian Institute on Democracy and Peace (Setara).

                          

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Washington.

Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the author of the law that bans US support to foreign militaries that violate human rights, said Indonesia’s Kopassus “remains unrepentant, essentially unreformed and unaccountable.”

“I deeply regret that before starting down the road of re-engagement, our country did not obtain and Kopassus did not accept the necessary reforms we have long sought,” said Leahy, a member of President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, visiting Jakarta on Thursday, announced that the United States would resume ties with Kopassus, an elite unit involved in Indonesia’s major past operations including the occupation of East Timor.

The Obama administration has been seeking to build relations with Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, which has rapidly transformed in the past decade into a civilian-led democracy.

But Gates said relations with Kopassus would be limited at first and that the United States would only expand cooperation if the unit, and the Indonesian military as a whole, undertake reforms.

“As far as I am concerned, that includes suspending any Kopassus officers who have been credibly linked to abuses, and pledging to cooperate in prosecutions of past and future crimes,” Leahy said.

Leahy, who heads the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that authorizes funding for foreign operations, was relieved that Gates did not announce full-fledged cooperation.

“A conditional toe in the water is wiser at this stage than diving in,” Leahy said.

“The United States and Indonesia share important interests, and I have sought a way forward that is consistent with our interests and our values. I hope that will become possible,” he said.

State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said the administration had discussed the Kopassus decision with US lawmakers and explained that Indonesia has made strides in human rights.

“That said, we’re going in with our eyes open,” Crowley said. “Kopassus has a dark past. We recognize that. We’re going to be insisting that Indonesia live up to its stated commitments.”

“It’s not a slippery slope,” Crowley said. “We think that this engagement can in fact help to further improve the performance of the Indonesian military.”

This post was submitted by Agence France-Presse.

                          

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The ban shows a rare point of agreement between Syria’s secular, authoritarian government and the democracies of Europe: Both view the niqab as a potentially destabilizing threat.

“We have given directives to all universities to ban niqab-wearing women from registering,” a government official in Damascus told The Associated Press on Monday.

The order affects both public and private universities and aims to protect Syria’s secular identity, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue. Hundreds of primary school teachers who were wearing the niqab at government-run schools were transferred last month to administrative jobs, he added.

The ban, issued Sunday by the Education Ministry, does not affect the hijab, or headscarf, which is far more common in Syria than the niqab’s billowing black robes.

Syria is the latest in a string of nations from Europe to the Middle East to weigh in on the veil, perhaps the most visible symbol of conservative Islam. Veils have spread in other secular-leaning Arab countries, such as Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, with Jordan’s government trying to discourage them by playing up reports of robbers who wear veils as masks.

Turkey bans Muslim headscarves in universities, with many saying attempts to allow them in schools amount to an attack on modern Turkey’s secular laws.

The issue has been debated across Europe, where France, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands are considering banning the niqab on the grounds it is degrading to women.

Last week, France’s lower house of parliament overwhelmingly approved a ban on both the niqab and the burqa, which covers even a woman’s eyes, in an effort to define and protect French values – a move that angered many in the country’s large Muslim community.

The measure goes before the Senate in September; its biggest hurdle could come when France’s constitutional watchdog scrutinizes it later. A controversial 2004 law in France earlier prohibited Muslim headscarves and other “ostentatious” religious symbols in the classrooms of French primary and secondary public schools.

Opponents say such bans violate freedom of religion and personal choice, and will stigmatize all Muslims.

In Damascus, a 19-year-old university student who would give only her first name, Duaa, said she hopes to continue wearing her niqab to classes when the next term begins in the fall, despite the ban.

Otherwise, she said, she will not be able to study.

“The niqab is a religious obligation,” said the woman, who would not give her surname because she was uncomfortable speaking out against the ban. “I cannot go without it.”

Nadia, a 44-year-old science teacher in Damascus who was reassigned last month because of her veil, said: “Wearing my niqab is a personal decision.”

“It reflects my freedom,” she said, also declining to give her full name.

In European countries, particularly France, the debate has turned on questions of how to integrate immigrants and balance a minority’s rights with secular opinion that the garb is an affront to women.

But in the Middle East – particularly Syria and Egypt, where there have been efforts to ban the niqab in the dorms of public universities – experts say the issue underscores the gulf between the secular elite and largely impoverished lower classes who find solace in religion.

Some observers say the bans also stem in part from fear of dissent.

The niqab is not widespread in Syria, although it has become more common in recent years, a development that has not gone unnoticed by the authoritarian government.

“We are witnessing a rapid income gap growing in Syria – there is a wealthy ostentatious class of people who are making money and wearing European clothes,” said Joshua Landis, an American professor and Syria expert who runs a blog called Syria Comment.

The lower classes are feeling the squeeze, he said.

“It’s almost inevitable that there’s going to be backlash. The worry is that it’s going to find its expression in greater Islamic radicalism,” Landis said.

Four decades of secular rule under the Baath Party have largely muted sectarian differences in Syria, although the state is quick to quash any dissent. In the 1980s, Syria crushed a bloody campaign by Sunni militants to topple the regime of then-President Hafez Assad.

The veil is linked to Salafism, a movement that models itself on early Islam with a doctrine that is similar to Saudi Arabia’s. In the broad spectrum of Islamic thought, Salafism is on the extreme conservative end.

In Gaza, radical Muslim groups encourage women to cover their faces and even conceal the shape of their shoulders by using layers of drapes.

It’s a mistake to view the niqab as a “personal freedom,” Bassam Qadhi, a Syrian women’s rights activist, told local media recently.

“It is rather a declaration of extremism,” Qadhi said.

This post was submitted by Kennedy reported from Beirut..

                          

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This post was submitted by Michelle Nichols/ Doina Chiacu/rtr.

                          

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In announcing this week that the United States would lift a 12-year-long ban on providing military assistance and training to Indonesia’s special forces unit, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates spoke about the Indonesian military’s reforms and said it is prepared to ensure accountability for any human rights abuses by its soldiers. My experience with Indonesia’s special forces and its justice system lead me to think President Obama is making a dangerous mistake.

My husband, the late Munir Said Thalib, was one of Indonesia’s most prominent human rights leaders. He was close in age to and had much in common with President Obama. Munir, too, worked as a community organizer, helping the weak, the poor and victims of political repression. Both men spoke the language of human rights, and both received international recognition for their contributions to humanity: Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize; Munir won Sweden’s prestigious Right Livelihood Award in 2000. Obama’s boyhood home in Jakarta’s Menteng neighborhood is a short distance from the office of Kontras, the human rights organization where my husband worked.

Like the Obamas, my husband and I had two beautiful children, now ages 11 and 7. Unlike Malia and Sasha, my children have lost their father.

In September 2004, my husband was fatally poisoned on a flight from Indonesia to the Netherlands. Nearly six years later, no one has been held accountable for ordering his murder.

Indonesian courts have found three people guilty of directly causing Munir’s death: two employees of the airline and an off-duty Garuda pilot who was also an intelligence agent. These individuals had no personal motive to kill my husband. All indications are that they did not act on their own initiative. Yet authorities have not determined whether other members of the security or intelligence services ordered Munir’s death. In December 2008, a senior intelligence official, Maj. Gen. Muchdi Purwopranjono, was acquitted of ordering the murder in a trial that our National Commission on Human Rights has called seriously flawed. Indonesian police and the Office of the Attorney General have taken no further steps to resolve the case.

Years earlier, Muchdi Purwopranjono lost his job in Kopassus, the special forces, after my husband revealed the general’s involvement in the abduction and torture of pro-reform student activists in the late 1990s. I helped Munir investigate the disappearances. Munir also brought to light allegations of Kopassus’s involvement in other serious human rights abuses in East Timor and Papua, and he strongly opposed the brutal practices of the Indonesian military — including Kopassus — in the province of Aceh.

The United States rightly refused to support Kopassus because of its members’ involvement in these and other incidents of abuse. But the Obama administration, seeking to improve ties with Indonesia, has agreed to allow training to resume if the government will ensure that those convicted of abuse would be moved out of Kopassus.

Promises to shift abusers out of Kopassus and into other military units are simply not enough. Members of Kopassus have no fear that they will be prosecuted for serious wrongdoing. The special forces protect members who are implicated in such abuses. Even the few who have been convicted by military courts are largely still serving. This will not change until members of the security service who have committed abuses are brought to justice.

The U.S. decision also undercuts the work of civil society groups. In March four prominent Indonesian non-governmental human rights organizations suggested strict conditions for any U.S. reengagement with Kopassus, noting that “nothing has been done to restore the rights of the victims or punish those who were responsible.”

The Obama administration opted for a lower standard for reengagement than what we in Indonesian civil society have asked for, even as the Pentagon points to meetings with people like me as evidence of Indonesia’s transition to a rights-respecting democracy.

Indonesia has made much progress on the road to democracy and stability, but enhancing the reach of a powerful military force that lacks respect for the rule of law jeopardizes those hard-fought gains. Obama is rewarding Kopassus without requiring accountability. I fear that the Indonesian security services will again get away with murder.

The people of Indonesia have faith in Obama’s humanitarian values, particularly his power to encourage positive change in our country. The next steps for his administration are clear: Reverse the decision to train Kopassus in the absence of such change and persuade President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to honor Indonesia’s international obligations for justice. Help me give my children an answer about their father’s murder.

The writer was married to Indonesian human rights activist Munir Thalib, who was killed in 2004.

This post was submitted by Suciwati/washington post.

                          

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Singapore:

The natural environment provides services critical to economies, from clean water, rich fishing grounds and coral reefs to clean air filtered by forests, services that are not fully taken into account in modern economics.

But scientists say the deterioration of these services through loss of species robs the planet of rich resources that can help mankind to grow sufficient food as well as exploit a vast gene pool to make new drugs and even beauty treatments.

In Indonesia, the loss of biodiversity has reached crisis levels, scientists at a major tropical biodiversity meeting in Bali this week said.

“The reason Indonesia is going through such a major crisis is because the biodiversity of Indonesia is extremely rich,” said senior scientist Terry Sunderland of the Centre for International Forestry Research based in Bogor, Indonesia.

“It is probably the second most important country after Brazil in terms of biodiversity,” Sunderland said. “The other great value of Indonesia’s biodiversity is that many of the species that are found here are endemic.

“Because there are 17,000 islands, you have these unique ecosystems throughout the archipelago which combined have a huge number of species, so the biodiversity value of the country as a whole is enormous.”

But logging of forests and rapid expansion of pulp and paper and oil palm plantations has created vast monocultures with little resilience to disease or climate change.

Bronwen Powell, a PhD candidate and specialist on forests and nutrition who presented a paper at the Bali conference, said deforestation could increase human exposure to diseases carried by primates and drive important medicinal plants to the point of extinction.

“A huge number of the world’s pharmaceuticals were discovered as compounds in plants,” she said. “As forests are lost, the knowledge that goes with those plants is lost as well. We are potentially losing the cure for cancer.”

About half the country of 240 million people remains forested and the government has ramped up efforts to save it, including an agreement on a two-year moratorium from next January on the clearing of natural forests.

The United Nations says annual losses from deforestation and damage to forests alone is estimated at between $2 trillion and $4.5 trillion globally.

Sunderland said the basic equivalent of the market value of biodiversity, if you include pharmaceuticals, agriculture and food, health and beauty products, was about $500 billion, roughly the equivalent of the petrochemicals industry.

Slowing the loss of the planet’s plant and animal species and putting a value to them has risen up the global political agenda, with 2010 being the International Year of Biodiversity.

A major meeting in Japan in October is expected to agree on new targets, including a 2050 vision.

World leaders agreed in 2002 to achieve a significant reduction in biodiversity loss by 2010. But the United Nations has said the target has not been met and that current trends are placing the planet on a path to possible cataclysm.

This post was submitted by Reuters.

                          

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One example of a folk goddess that has gained an enormous following is Mazu, a sea deity believed to protect sailors and fishermen. Though she started as a local folk goddess, she has entered the Daoist and Buddhist pantheon, and is also known as Tianhou or Tinhau in Hong Kong.

Scholars say she has an estimated 160 million followers and 4,000 temples devoted solely to her in China.

The explosion of interest in this folk god reflects the results of a 2006 survey in China, which found that two-thirds of those who described themselves as religious were Buddhists, Daoists or worshippers of folk gods.

China’s communist leaders once dismissed worship of deities such as Mazu as nothing more than superstition and banned it.

But far from mistrusting Mazu’s millions of worshippers, China’s atheist Communist Party is now encouraging them and overseeing massive events, such as the birthday celebration in early May this year at Mazu’s birthplace, Meizhou Island in the southern Chinese province of Fujian.

The Birth And Growth Of Mazu Worship

Temples across the island participate in the celebration. On the night before Mazu’s 1,050th birthday, the island’s Mazu statues are getting spiffed up before the big day. In the Mazu temple in Wenxing village, an elderly woman carefully lowers garlands of red banknotes around the neck of a statue of Mazu.

Crowds of women clad in lucky red clothes kowtow to the altar, burning incense and murmuring appeals to Mazu’s mercy.

Mazu was a real person; temple guardian Wei Yazhen tells her story.

“When Mazu was a little girl, her father and brothers went out fishing and got into trouble at sea. She dreamed she was carrying them to safety,” Wei explains. “But then her mother woke her up and she dropped her father into the sea. Her father died, but she saved her two brothers.”

There are many different versions of this story; in some, her father is saved and a brother dies. In any case, Mazu became known for her ability to predict stormy weather and protect fishermen. Her fame grew, even after her death.

In the 12th century, a Chinese emperor ordered a Mazu temple to be built after she was believed to have protected an official ship on a mission to Korea, and Mazu worship spread nationwide.

Cheng Jinhu is a doctor who helps organize celebrations in the island village.

“Mazu protects fishermen at sea from shipwrecks and helps the poor. Most of our village depends on fishing, and Mazu worship is growing stronger than in the past,” Cheng says.

On the eve of Mazu’s birthday, opera singers in elaborate silk costumes strut as their voices slip and slide along the scale, cutting through the hum of the crowd. They’re performing local opera known as Putian in front of hand-painted backdrops in the village square.

It’s a scene that could have taken place at any point in the past 500 years, were it not for electronic screens, displaying the opera lyrics.

In the changing room, 23-year-old Cheng Zhigui paints his face into a dramatic pink-and-white mask. He has been singing for a decade.

The fact that the entire village is watching doesn’t faze him. In fact, the troupe isn’t singing for mere mortals.

“We perform for Mazu,” Cheng says. “We believe that she’s watching us singing opera. The audience can also watch. But if there are no people here, she’ll still be watching us.”

Part Religious, Part Cultural, Part Political

Dawn breaks over smooth, windless seas on Mazu’s birthday. In Wenxing, at 7 a.m., the entire village is up.

Worshippers carry the Mazu statue out of the village temple as a band plays folk instruments. A few children have been chosen to accompany the statue on its pilgrimage back to its mother temple elsewhere on the island. They’re dressed in silk pajamas, their faces painted into traditional opera masks.

To shouts and fireworks, Mazu is hauled down the steps in front of temple and hefted into a truck, which drives her to the square in front of the main Mazu ancestral temple, where 10,000 people are gathered.

At one end of the square, Wenxing’s Mazu takes pride of place, side by side with more than a dozen sister statues from each village’s Mazu temple.

This year, old rites are being resurrected for the biggest ceremony in more than half a century, says Lin Jinbang, chairman of the island’s main Mazu temple.

“We even have an honor guard of horses for the first time in more than six decades,” he says. “Old people who’ve seen the ceremony before passed on the rituals. Otherwise, the next generation wouldn’t know what to do.”

Facing off at the other end of the square from the Mazu statues is a podium, where government officials from the Communist Party are seated. The ceremony is part political rally, part religious ceremony and part cultural event.

Even the island’s top Communist Party official, the Meizhou party secretary, Zhuang Yonghui, admits to worshipping.

“Of course I believe in Mazu,” he says, denying any contradiction with the communist creed of atheism. “Mazu’s not a religion. It’s a popular belief, so there’s no contradiction with the Communist Party’s stance on not believing in religion.”

Women in elegant green robes dance in the square in perfectly timed unison. Such cultural performances are significant, since they are one factor that four years ago allowed the government to reclassify Mazu worship not as superstition — not even as religion — but as cultural heritage.

Last year, UNESCO, the U.N. agency that promotes preserving cultures, designated Mazu as “intangible cultural heritage of humanity.”

Wang Hongguang, head of the Mazu Research Institute at Shanghai Institute for International Studies, explains that unlike Daoism and other religions, Mazu temples are not administered by monks. There is no organized mass or ritual that requires the spiritual leadership of a religious institution.

“The people who manage the temple are chosen by ordinary people,” Wang says. “It’s not like Christianity, where you have to go through a certain ceremony to become a believer. For Mazu, if you believe and attend activities, then you are a believer.” By activities, he means occasional visits to the temple to light incense and make offerings, or the practice of keeping a Mazu shrine at home.

Mazu Worship Strengthening Cross-Strait Ties

Locals believe politics and economics are behind the government decision to classify Mazu worship as cultural heritage. These factors are embodied in the presence of Cheng Minshou, a beaming Taiwanese VIP guest wearing a gold sash and clutching a small golden statue of Mazu.

He says he traveled 14 hours to reach Meizhou Island “to bring a golden statue of Mazu from my hometown to participate in this ceremony.”

Religious tourists like Cheng also bring investment to the island, and engender political ties across the Taiwan Strait.

“Taiwanese coming here on pilgrimage have really helped communication between mainland China and Taiwan,” he agrees. “We’ve bought a small island near Macau, and we’re building a Mazu temple there this year. It’ll be finished by next year.”

Mazu worship spread overseas as Chinese from coastal provinces migrated by sea, and they subsequently attributed their safe journeys to Mazu’s protection.

After China’s economic reforms began in 1979, Mazu worship spread further along trade routes, notes Lin Qitang, an expert on Mazu at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

“Businessmen from Fujian built Mazu temples wherever they went,” Lin says. “Mazu temples were seen as offices where Fujian businessmen congregated. They also stored goods, traded and consulted each other there. So Mazu became a cohesive force

Shared belief in Mazu was one of the forces bringing Taiwanese to the area, even when politics made that difficult. In 1987, when direct links were still forbidden, about 275 Taiwanese Mazu believers sailed across the Taiwan Strait to Meizhou on a pilgrimage, setting a trend in which religious believers have spearheaded contacts.

Mazu worship has served to build closer political and economic ties across the Taiwan Strait, strengthening China’s eventual aim of reunification.

Lin, the Mazu expert, says that “Mazu fever in Taiwan brought business opportunities to the mainland. So the non-government interaction turned out to be government bilateral communication.”

Recent figures show that in the past three months, 100,000 tourists have been to Meizhou, including 15 groups of Taiwanese every day.

Popular Religion A Tool For China’s Leaders

After the government ceremony ends, a noisy daylong parade around the island begins. Mazu statues are carried in palanquins, accompanied by snapping firecrackers, pipe bands, whirling lion dancers and clashing cymbals.

As the parade passes, villagers clad in red hurry to tuck money into the statues. The children in the parade, like the Mazu statues, wear chains of banknotes round their necks.

As people get richer, money is one way in which Mazu worship is changing the social structure and the balance of power in the villages.

“Of course the temple chairman is more important than the village chief,” says a villager surnamed Zheng. “Because the temple governs a larger area and makes decisions about temple fairs, which the village boss can’t.”

Women in costumes fashioned into multicolored boat costumes “row” past, swinging their oars and singing.

Religion is alive and well on Meizhou Island. What’s more, it’s reinvigorating both tradition and civil society.

And it is a sign of how far the Communist Party has moved. This atheist party is encouraging the worship of this ancient goddess toward its greater aims of building a harmonious society; and of moving closer to Taiwan — the island it thinks of as a renegade province.

That party members can openly worship could serve as a test-case for local deities in other places in China.

The Communist Party once regarded worshiping folk goddesses like Mazu as rank superstition. But now, she is a money-maker, co-opted and harnessed by local officials. Far from being banned, Mazu is being used by China’s communist leaders for their own political and economic ends.

This post was submitted by Louisa Lim/npr.

                          

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