Two Muslim members of Britain's House of Lords were in Khartoum yesterday to seek the release of 54-year-old Gillian Gibbons.
Lord Ahmed and Baroness Warsi, from the upper house of Britain's parliament, were to meet with Sudanese officials in a bid to free Gibbons, who was jailed for 15 days on Thursday for insulting religion.
"They're on a private visit with the [Sudanese] government," a British embassy spokesman said. "We welcome any efforts to help in the case, but we're not involved in their program."
PHOTO: AFP
Thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and swords and beating drums, burned pictures of a British teacher on Friday and demanded her execution for insulting Islam by letting her students name a teddy bear Mohammed.
Sudan's Islamic government, which has long whipped up anti-Western, Muslim hard-line sentiment at home, was balancing between fueling outrage over the case of Gibbons and containing it.
Khartoum does not want to seriously damage ties with Britain, but the show of anger underlines its stance that Sudanese oppose Western interference, lawyers and political foes said. The uproar comes as the UN is accusing Sudan of dragging its feet on the deployment of peacekeepers in the war-torn Darfur region.
Many in the protesting crowd shouted ``Kill her! Kill her by firing squad!''
In response to the rally in central Khartoum, Gibbons was moved from the prison across the Nile in Oumdurman to a secret location, her chief lawyer Kamal al-Gizouli said. He said he visited her there to discuss her conviction.
Gibbons could have faced a maximum sentence of 40 lashes, six months in jail and a fine.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has called in the Sudanese ambassador to London twice for talks on the issue, underlining that Gibbons' actions were the result of an "innocent misunderstanding."
Gibbons spoke on Friday with her son John and daughter Jessica in Britain by telephone.
"One of the things my mum said today was that I don't want any resentment towards Muslims," the son said. "She's holding up quite well."
Despite the fervor of the protest, the rest of Khartoum was quiet. The rally was far smaller than protests held in February last year with government backing after European newspapers ran caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, suggesting popular anger over Gibbons did not run as deep.
In their mosque sermons on Friday, several Muslim clerics harshly denounced Gibbons, saying she had intentionally insulted the prophet, but they did not call for protests.
Still, after prayers, several thousand people converged on Khartoum's Martyrs Square, near the presidential palace, and began calling for Gibbons' execution. Many seemed to be from Sufi groups, religious sects that emphasize reverence for the prophet.
Some angrily denounced the teacher, dismissing Gibbons' claims that she did not mean to insult the prophet.
"It is a premeditated action, and this unbeliever thinks that she can fool us?" said Yassin Mubarak, a young dreadlocked man swathed in green and carrying a sword.
"What she did requires her life to be taken," he said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to