The prices Religions offer.

* David Smith and agencies
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 8 March 2010 11.40 GMT
* Article history

Nigeria burnt homes

Wrecked homes after religious clashes in Nigeria in January. Hundreds are feared to have died in further violence. Photograph: Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images

Attackers wielding machetes killed hundreds of people as further religious violence hit Nigeria yesterday following pre-dawn clashes between Islamist pastoralists and Christian villagers.

Bodies were reportedly piled in streets near the central city of Jos and Gregory Yenlong, a Plateau state official, said the death toll could be more than 500.

"Soldiers are patrolling and everywhere remains calm ... we are estimating 500 people killed but I think it should be a little bit above that," he added.

A police spokesman said the number of dead officially recorded so far stood at 55.

Some people were apparently burned to death and many others displaced as homes were razed to the ground.

Local aid agencies described the violence as a "reprisal" for sectarian clashes in January in which 300 people, most of them Muslims, died and Jos was put under military curfew.

Residents of Dogo Nahawa, a mainly Christian village about three miles south of Jos, said Islamist pastoralists from the surrounding hills had attacked at about 3am, firing guns into the air before slashing villagers with machetes.

"They came around three o'clock in the morning and started shooting into the air," Peter Jang, a village resident, said.

"The shooting was meant to bring people from their houses and then, when people came out, they started cutting them with machetes."

Yemi Kosoko, a reporter with the independent Nigerian news network Channels, said he had counted more than 200 bodies, mainly women and children who had been killed by blows from machetes.

Kosoko said he had made the count yesterday afternoon with an official from the state government.

Military units began surrounding the affected villages at around the same time.

"This is an act of inhumanity," Da Buba Gyang, the traditional ruler of the Christian Berom ethnic group in Jos, said.

A Reuters reporter who visited the village counted around 100 bodies, but said victims had also been brought to hospitals in Jos and some had been quickly buried, making it difficult for officials to assess the toll.

Pam Dantong, the medical director of Plateau state hospital in Jos, showed reporters 18 bodies, some charred, that had been brought from Dogo Nahawa. Officials said other bodies had been taken to a second hospital in the state capital.

Robin Waubo, a spokesman for the Red Cross in Nigeria, said he was aware of 50 confirmed fatalities but added that Red Cross staff were still visiting hospitals.

"It seems like they were reprisal attacks from what happened a few weeks ago," he said. "The fighting now seems to have calmed down and the military has been deployed to resolve the situation.

"We know people have been slashed by machetes and others have sustained injuries as they tried to flee."

A Red Cross official in the nearby state of Bauchi said more than 600 people had fled to makeshift camps there to escape the violence.

Sectarian violence in this region of Nigeria has killed thousands during the past decade.

Jos lies at the crossroads of Nigeria's Muslim north and predominantly Christian south. In November 2008, clashes between Muslim and Christian gangs, triggered by a disputed local election, resulted in the deaths of at least 700 people.

The instability underlines the fragility of Africa's most populous nation as it approaches the campaign period for elections in 2011 with uncertainty over who is in charge.

The acting president, Goodluck Jonathan, is trying to assert his authority, while the country's leader, Umaru Yar'Adua, remains too ill to govern.

Yar'Adua returned from three months in a Saudi hospital, where he was being treated for a heart condition, a week and a half ago but has still not been seen in public.

Presidency sources say he remains in a mobile intensive care unit.

Jonathan deployed hundreds of troops and police to quell January's unrest, which followed a dispute between Muslim and Christian neighbours over the rebuilding of homes destroyed in 2008.

Community leaders estimated that the death toll from the four days of clashes was more than 400, while police figures put it at 326.

FEB 28 — Malaysia appears determined to make an international fool of itself.

The latest news, according to Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, the women’s minister, is that the country is considering organizing an international conference on caning and whether it is an appropriate punishment for women under Islamic law.

The announcement by Shahrizat comes on the heels of a government statement last week, nine days after the fact, that a Shariah court had ordered the caning of three women for adultery.

A fourth, far more publicized, is the case of Kartika Dewi Shukarni, a part-time model who was ordered by a Shariah court to be caned for drinking beer. The case is still up in the air while the regent of Pahang state decides how to treat the matter.

This all is in addition to the widely publicized show trial of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim on charges of consensual sex with a male, a selective prosecution at best even if he did it, since Kuala Lumpur is thronged with gay bars, and political persecution at the worst over widespread suspicion that the charges were trumped up.

There is also the January violence in the wake of a High Court judge’s decision to allow the Malaysian Catholic Church to use the word Allah as a synonym for God in the Malay-language editions of its newspaper, the Catholic Herald. Eleven churches, a Sikh temple and two Muslim prayer rooms were attacked.

Many critics hold Malaysia’s largest political party, the United Malays National Organization, responsible for fanning racial disharmony. In the cases of the prayer rooms, eight UMNO members were arrested for attacking them in an apparent attempt to make it look like either Chinese or Indians had done it.

There are similar suspicions that ethnic Malays had thrown pigs’ heads with money in their mouths into mosques in Kuala Lumpur.

That, plus the continuing political turmoil, appears to be driving up flight capital totals and citizens who are leaving along with their money. And it is giving international investors some serious second thoughts at a time when the export-led economy is finally starting to emerge from the global financial crisis that began in October 2008.

Although caning is officially outlawed in only 25 countries, it is rare in a lot more, and in very few is it practiced as barbarically — on men — as it is in Malaysia, which until quite recently was regarded by the world as one of the globe’s most advanced Islamic states.

Now that reputation is in shreds, largely driven not by religion but by politics. The Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), a traditionally conservative opposition Islamic party, has expressed concern about the canings.

It may well be that PAS will end up more lenient on caning than the UMNO, and thus draw in alienated moderate Malays. Dzulkefly Ahmad, the Islamist party’s chief strategist, called the canings politically motivated and said Islamic justice calls for fairness without cruelty or corruption.

The caning itself makes one wonder if Malaysia can do anything right.

Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters the caning “did not injure them, [but] the three women said it caused pain within their souls.”

One would assume that the purpose of corporal punishment is to cause pain. And when it is done to males in Malaysia and other countries that were once part of the British empire, the damage from the rotan , a thick rattan whip, can be so traumatic that they pass out after one or two strokes. Offenders have been known to beg for more prison time to escape the rotan. Authorities use only a light rattan stick to hit women on their backs.

So what the caning of the women has done is to show that to much of the world the authorities look like barbarians, while to the rest of it they look like fools for sparing the rod and trying to have it both ways.

Certainly, the outcry across both Malaysia and the world should have been enough to give pause to the government.

Rights organizations also object on the basis that Malaysia has a two-tier justice system. Muslims come under the jurisdiction of the Shariah courts, while the other 40 percent of Malaysia’s 28 million people, mostly ethnic Chinese and Indians, come under the regular civil courts. Under the country’s civil justice system, flogging of women is forbidden. Thus, the rights groups say, Muslim women are being discriminated against.

But this is not particularly a product of Islam. Judicial corporal punishment in Asia is practiced only in countries formerly ruled by the British. The late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto put an end to the practice in Pakistan.

Despite the concerns over the Anwar trial, which has drawn criticism from lawmakers in Australia and the United States as trumped up to snuff out a legitimate opposition, tourism visits are up — or were, hitting about 1.5 million from January 2009, a rise of 7.2 percent year-on-year in October. Expectations of a double-digit increase in 2010 tourism may be dampened by the publicity. — The Jakarta Globe

MARCH 2 — Before coming here, I never thought much about canes but when I did, it was usually in a positive light.

Walking canes help the disabled, elderly, and hikers live more active and comfortable lives.

When my grandmother broke her hip, she needed a cane. The cane was an important instrument for her to support herself on.

As a camp counselor, I loved making walking canes with my campers.

The children loved feeling mature and sophisticated walking with a cane, looking like Confucius on the mountain.

Speaking of that, if you ever try to climb Malaysia’s great Mt. Kinabalu make sure you bring a cane, and lots of energy! In short, a cane can help individuals.

Many of my travels as a child took me through parts of the world where sugar cane is produced.

Sugar cane is indigenous to Southeast Asia, but today one third of all sugar cane production comes from Brazil.

Sugar cane can be refined into table sugar; cane juice with lemon and ice makes a delicious drink called caldo de cana; cane can also be used to make ethanol (biodiesel for Brazilian cars), distilled cane becomes Cachaca the popular Brazilian alcohol, and some people just chew sugar cane raw.

In other words, the cane can be very useful to society.

Growing up in Canada it was common to receive heaps of candy canes in December. I could always count on my teacher to give me a cane during the holidays. Candy canes are delicious and sweet. In this case, the cane brings joy to many people’s lives.

But the word “cane” carries a different significance now for the average Malaysian.

Last April in Seremban, Chan Qi Xian died after being caned by his teacher. He was a little boy who made mistakes. Tragically, he’ll never have the opportunity to make the same mistakes again. He needed to learn from his — not die from them.

Recently, this physical reprimand has been applied by syariah law.

In 2007, Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno was caught drinking in a hotel bar. She was sentenced to caning but the punishment is on hold.

To the international observer, it may seem like a Malaysian Muslim drinking in a bar is a rare sighting. I asked Malaysians if they knew Muslims who drank regularly in bars. They all said yes. Does this surprise you? Why was Kartika singled out?

Last month, Syariah caning took place in Malaysia for the first time. Three women were quietly caned before the media could respond, for sex before marriage.

Are these the only three Muslim women (or men) who have done this? Is this really a crime worth international attention?

Syariah caning is done with a “limp wrist”, meant to shame — not to hurt, but is it the severity of the physical pain that should be focused on?

Whether it is a light tap or a hard rap, whether it leaves bruises, or the receiving party actually wanted it, caning is not an appropriate action to take against drinking, pre-marital sex, and misbehaving children.

Are they just making an example of these individuals? If every Muslim is caned for drinking beer or having illicit sex in Malaysia, the country will be a very different place: a scary place for many Muslims I know — especially those who are Muslim by name (Malay) but not by conscience.

If this is a fair law then it should be applied all the time, not just symbolically. Can you imagine how many people would need to be punished?

Why do I joke about such a serious matter? Maybe because the actual offenses are not so serious? If they are applying a serious punishment to an unserious crime, one can’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation.

Just because someone makes a mistake, just because someone is in the wrong — it does not make that person a criminal. Or at least not someone who deserves such an odd punishment.

A child has died, and women have been hurt (limp wrist or not), if only publicly embarrassed over a private matter.

Many different peoples with many different points of view will be reading this, but can’t we all agree that the punishment should fit the crime?

I have obviously been very fortunate in regards to the “canes” I have encountered. I am a non-Muslim, non-Malaysian, non-woman, and non-child, yet I feel compelled to comment on this issue.

I am not an expert on corporal punishment caning or syariah law caning, I simply want to comment on this “punishment”, not the “belief behind it.”

If a punishment is just, then it should be transparent and able to withstand scrutiny. I don’t think silencing/censoring/ignoring different views helps anyone (ie. the recent reprimand of The Star for having a non-Muslim comment on this issue).

Some types of “canes” can be beneficial to society. It’s just that I don’t believe that this particular type of cane, used in these particular instances, benefits society.

Why use the cane to hurt non-criminal women and children? Every single person reading this, myself included, has made mistakes. We can learn without being caned. Sometimes it seems like Malaysian society is limping along with a cane.

Let’s cast it aside and walk proudly and ethically through the 21st century.