China: Sorcerers' chance

The Chinese Government is not only battling against SARS (Severe Acute Respiration Syndrome). In the shadow of the new viral disease, another disastrous epidemic is spreading in China’s villages: occultism. Sorcerers, who had lost considerable ground due to the government’s science education campaigns, are using the current panic to make a come back.

The local press in the central province of Hunan reported about huge crowds of villagers, gathering in front of sorcerer houses and temples to pray for divine help. The sorcerers perform fire rituals to the sound of gongs and drums and give mystic advices. One report mentions about a holy child oracle. Villagers are made to bow their heads to Buddha statues and spiritual scrolls. Hundreds of candles are enlightened, incense smoke is flickering in the air, firecrackers are burst. Sometimes the villagers would burn fake money notes, but always they would offer real ones to pacify gods and spirits and satisfy the sorcerer.

According to newest information, SARS has infected at least 5000 people in China. So far 262 people died of the disease.

Cannes Film Festival: Lifting the burqa on Afghanistan

With her new film At five in the afternoon, Iranian film director Samira Makhmalbaf (23) has brought shocking and moving scenes from today’s Afghanistan to Cannes. The Taliban have gone, but life is still harsh and sometimes hopeless in the "freed" country, especially if one is female. The film depicts the life of the girl Noqreh between uncertainty, suffering, repression and hope - occasionally little victories. Pressed with poverty, her family in search of a place to live (which they finally find – in the fuselage of an airplane crashed in the desert), she is courageous enough to fight for her future and to nurse ambitious hopes. She manages to go to school, defying the wishes and orders of her father. She dreams of becoming Afghanistan’s first female president, and starts defending her dream. Life moves in small steps.. Noqreh walks through the streets of Kabul, defiantly lifting her burqa (causing an old man to turn to the wall and pray for forgiveness).

Between careful optimism and painful disillusion, the young director, who won the Price of the Jury in 2000 with her film Blackboard, insists on being mercilessly realistic. Many of the scenes are based on her own personal experiences visiting Afghanistan. “Through this movie I try to correct the wrong information given about Afghanistan by the media”, she said. “Afghanistan’s history is so sad. It’s not 'America went in and everything is solved'. I tried to show the reality of Afghanistan. Not my desires about what Afghanistan could be.”

European Constitution: God comes through the backdoor

Christian pressure groups of all provenience have tried hard to press in endless and heated debates for a mentioning of God in the preamble of the future European Constitution. The Vatican has launched a crusade to save Europe’s soul by forcing at least the reference to her “common Christian heritage” into the preamble. The drafting panel, between pious pressure and secular resistance, decided to keep the preamble clean from controversial references.

However, it succumbed to the wishes of the religious lobby in a different way. It kept a backdoor wide open for the churches to march in and highjack progressive policies.

The draft constitution defines “European values”, listing liberty, democracy, rule of law, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and for something with the name spiritual and human values. As the guards of this giant loophole, the churches are entitled to intervene into European policy making whenever they feel that these spiritual and human values are not sufficiently respected.

It does not need much phantasy to anticipate what unpleasant developments are threatening education policy or legislation regarding abortion, euthanasia, divorce etc., if the churches are given free hand to shape a future Europe according to their religious ideals.

The European Humanist Federation (EHF) with seat in Bruxelles has taken initiative to launch an appeal to the European Convention demanding the withdrawal of Article 37 of the future European Constitution. The appeal warns that the separation of church and state must apply to all areas of community life. The Constitution has to protect and guarantee the right of the individuals to make free decisions concerning their lifestyles and personal choices rather than allow the churches to assert their religious options on matters like education, morality, family, contraception, abortion and many others.