Say it ain’t so – disbelief over Briton Shaikh’s execution

Britain is outraged. Akmal Shaikh’s family is outraged. I’m joining the outrage.

On Tuesday, the Briton Akmal Shaikh was put to death in China for smuggling 8.8 pounds of heroin in a flight from Tajikistan to Xinjiang last year. He didn’t kill anyone, he didn’t threaten to destabilise the Chinese government, he wasn’t out in the streets defaming Mao – he just tried to rope in a whole lot of cash for a whole lot of dope.

Dope. Illegal powder. Powder that, when caught in doses of more than 50 grams at one time, is grounds for the death penalty in China for the person carrying it.

I’m not denying that Shaikh didn’t know the rules or that he didn’t, in fact, break them (he obviously did). I’m more concerned that this rule exists in the first place.

How does China justify killing someone over drug smuggling? My brain just doesn’t register the logic. For killing another human being – yes. Or for terrorist plots against a nation – check. But selling some white stuff that will get you high? Nope. I don’t get it. It’s yet one more area where China has a long way to go in terms of human rights.

I remember when I was in junior high and heard a rumor about a country somewhere that cut people’s hands off for stealing (part of Shariah Islamic law, incidentally). I was horrified, but somewhere deep inside, I decided that while it was awfully harsh, the crime there must at least be strictly minimized.

While now that I’m all grown up i do see flaws in that plan, it’s true that the punishment, if nothing else, fits the crime. There are reasons why parts of Islamic law say it is necessary to cut off one’s hands for stealing – it prevents the thief from ever stealing again, keeping all the rest of us safe. Yes, it is inhumane, but it somehow makes sense.

China’s law of the death penalty over drug smuggling doesn’t. If we apply a tit for tat policy, Akmal Shaikh should have been forced to smoke up a massive amount of that heroin for a month, then quit cold turkey. Is this inhumane? Maybe. But at least it applies some kind of reasoning. Killing him outright goes from A to Z without addressing the missing letters.

In truth, I’m against the inhumane treatment of anyone, including the world’s most serious offenders. In my world, I wouldn’t instate the death penalty at all. Prisons would still exist, but they’d be centers of reform with teams of psychiatrists working around the clock to ensure that criminals would be out in a few years and back to leading a normal, socially-acceptable life.

Unfortunately, until I become president, our current world governments will have to figure out other ways of keeping each other safe within the established infrastructures while maintaining some essence of human rights. Ordering an execution for a little white powder – or even a lot – isn’t getting us, as a people, anywhere.

Run for cover, she’s got the grippe!

“Help stop the spread of H1N1flu today! Notify staff if you have a fever and cough.”

I read these fateful words upon entering my neighborhood Paris clinic, gulping hard. After spending the latter part of my month with a congested head and burgeoning chest cold, I had finally decided to see a doctor. It didn’t hurt that I had woken up that particular morning feeling like I’d been hit by a Mac truck, slight fever in tow. But it couldn’t be the dreaded swine flu… could it?

I consider myself an educated person, someone who reads the news and has at least a fraction of common sense. So I am not ignorant of how germs are spread. However, the thought of entering a crowded municipal clinic waiting room with a blue paper mask engulfing my face felt like the modern-day equivalent of attaching a scarlet ‘A’ to my chest. And so, as my internal body heat rose with every step, I willed myself not to cough for the next two hours and walked quietly into the room.

Two hours and two degrees of fever later, my name was finally called. I walked into the doctor’s office, explained my symptoms and awaited the deluge of guilt-tripping as to why I didn’t notify anyone about my chances of being Paris’s next silent killer. To my surprise, my doctor plainly said: “You have a virus.”

“How do I know if it’s the regular flu or the swine flu?” I whimpered. My response was an unenthusiastic shrug. “They’re both the same, then?” I asked. Another shrug.

And so, with my prescription for bed rest in hand, I walked out of the clinic coughing at full force, awaiting my next victim.

Unfortunately, having just a “virus” wasn’t good enough for my workplace, which involves children ages 2-6, and I was instructed to promptly get an H1N1 flu test. The doctor may have thought H1N1 and influenza were interchangeable, but the media has shown us otherwise. My employers wanted proof.

What I discovered on my forthcoming lab test adventure, was that the spread of this illness – whether truly life-threatening or not – is incrementally more likely when no one in France is willing to test those who may be sick with it.

“We take a sample from your nose [called the Rapid Flu Test in the U.S.] and then you’ll find out if you have a flu or not, but not which flu,” said the woman at the lab the next morning. “If we find out that you have a flu, it will be sent out to see if it’s H1N1 or not… but it’s not very accurate.” How inaccurate, I wondered? “If you have H1N1, it often tells you that you don’t, and if you don’t have it, it can tell you that you do. It has between a 10% and 70% accuracy rate.”

Well, that certainly cleared things up.

The other option in France is to take a specific H1N1 flu test, which is 80 euros and not reimbursed by the national health insurance. Only five or six clinics in Paris perform the procedure, much less in other parts of France, and it is only done in cases of critical need – like, say, a pair of Parisian football players awaiting their next televised match against Marseille.

Things in the U.S. are no better. While there are significantly more cases than in France (349,491 confirmed/probable cases in the U.S. versus 25,103 in France, according to FluTracker and Rhiza Labs) the testing and vaccination methods in place are, as of yet, inefficient. Currently, the CDC is only testing flu-sufferers who have been hospitalized or are at high risk for complications. Treatment options won’t change based on results, plus there is simply not enough time or money for all other cases.

Same goes for vaccinations. During the first week of October, the first batch of H1N1 flu-vaccine nasal sprays arrived on U.S. soil. However, out of the U.S. government’s total order of 251 million doses, only 2.4 million were administered. Demand can’t keep up with supply, so health officials decided to send the vaccine over as it was ready, instead of waiting for the entire amount to accumulate. Already, the shortage in New York State alone is palpable, where the government has mandated that all health-care workers be vaccinated. Where does that leave the little people?

As for me here in France, I am finally able to enjoy comprehensive medical coverage – a coverage that hasn’t come as a result of selling my soul to a full-time job like in the U.S. But what good is that coverage if I am forced to self-diagnose.

In the end, I decided not to have the test. My doctor said my chances of having H1N1 were too slim and preferred to save the exam for really dire cases. Ten days later, I still don’t know what I had, and when I go back to the classroom next week my employer will have to be fine with that.

Perhaps, ultimately, I was socially irresponsible. Maybe I should have worn the mask in the clinic, should have insisted on taking the test – if anything, for public conscience’s sake. For now, I have just been telling people I had a “virus” and that it really was no big deal. But when my lingering cough takes off with a start, there isn’t a face in my vicinity that isn’t turned the other way, heading swiftly for cover.

First published in Brit’mag, November 2009

Forgive My (Aging) Sins! – Duch, Polanski and all the rest face a jailed future

Former Khmer Rouge regime leader and torturer Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, made front page news today when his trial ended with a plea for acquittal. Prosecution lawyers are striving for a 40-year sentence for the man who was responsible for the torture and killing of some 15,000 people in the S-21 prison in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979.

Duch, now 67, has admittedly had some distance from the situation. About 30 years of distance, in fact. My question is, do you prosecute someone who committed a crime in virtually another lifetime or let him enjoy the last years of his life with the dignity of an elderly man?

Take dear Roman Polanski and his underage lover from the late 70’s. Or French President Jacques Chirac’s embezzlement charges dating back to the 1990’s. And who can forget Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his 11 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity from the early 90’s?

I could fill this page with names of people who are only now facing up to poisonous acts executed decades ago. And there’s an additional, and equally long, list for those we’d like to indict (re: George Bush). But is it fair to send these usually aging and possibly reformed former leaders into the bleakness of prison for what will be, most likely, the remainder of their lives?

For me, it’s partly a question of age. Just as I cannot imagine sending a 12 year-old boy to jail for the rest of his life for shooting off a gun at his neighbor, I have trouble envisioning a grandpa-type withering away his last days in a tiny, steel cell.

Additionally, there is the question of torture, since most of these soon-to-be inmates will face it at some point in their jailed lives, even as hunching old fogeys. Do we say, “you got what you deserved” and leave it at that?

There is something to be said about mental space. Space, in the form of years, in which the brain can reformulate patterns of thinking. Reform. I will be the first to criticize the Born Again Christianity movement, but I have been privy to cases where a person or family unit was ultimately transformed by their renewed belief in Jesus. In effect, Duch of Cambodia has tried to get off scot free using his Born Again status as proof that he’s a changed man. Are we buying it? And if we do, should we?

I’m not saying that we should just let all the bad guys go. Obviously, if no one learns that genocide or rape or torture is inherently wrong, we have no chance of eradicating it in future generations. I just think that when we’re dealing with a combination of old age and years passed since a crime’s occurrence, a little perspective is due. And possibly, maybe, a little humanity as well.

Tibetans protest in Paris against Chinese executions

As the Eiffel Tower glittered behind them, more than one hundred Tibetans and supporters gathered near the Chinese Embassy in Paris to protest against the recent executions of two Tibetans in Lhasa.

Lobsang Gyaltsen and Loyak, who participated in the deadly protests in the Tibetan capital during last March’s Uprising Day, were sentenced to death in April for allegedly “starting fatal fires.” The executions took place at the end of October and were confirmed by the Chinese government. The Tibetan government in exile, however, maintains that in fact four Tibetans were executed.

Tibetans gathered in Paris on November 21 in protest

In Paris, members of the Tibetan community association led protesters in heated calls of “What do we want? We want Freedom!” and “Hu Jintao: Assasin!” for two hours, while holding candles and national flags. The event was highly personal for many in the crowd, some of whom became teary-eyed amongst the pleas for a free Tibet. Although a small number of Tibetans were born in France, most of the 300-person community grew up in a Chinese-controlled Tibet or in Tibetan settlements in India.

Tibet has been under Chinese rule since 1950, following an invasion in 1949. Since then, the Tibetan people have suffered from religious persecution, forced displacement, assimilation and torture, and have become a minority in their own country. The Chinese continue to withhold the whereabouts of one the most important Tibetan spiritual leaders, the 11th Panchen Lama.

Protesters placed candles in the shape of the "Om"

The Tibetan community will participate in another protest, organized by Paix Sans Frontières, next Tuesday, November 24st, at the Place de la Reine Astrid, near the Alma-Marceau metro stop in Paris.

Human rights on the line: Obama snubs Dalai Lama and meets with Chinese president

I find it interesting that Obama, the man who speaks loathingly about torture, who caused a cafuffle over Guantanamo and denounced Iran’s violent crackdown on protesters last June, is now seemingly devoid of emotion toward human rights abuses caused by China.

The most recent photos of President Barack Obama have him not sitting white-scarved and smiling with the Dalai Lama like most U.S. presidents before him, but shaking hands with Chinese President Hu Jintao. Sure, Obama has every right to meet with the leader of this swiftly developing nation, but the wounds are still fresh from last month when, during the Dalai Lama’s visit to the U.S., President Obama canceled their planned meeting and postponed it to a still unidentified date.

On November 17, Obama and Jintao met to discuss environmental issues and what Obama calls their shared “burden of leadership” (as he put it to a forum of students in Shanghai). The two talked, shook hands like old friends and agreed in advance not to talk about the sticky issues.

If anyone still remembers, Obama recently won the Nobel Peace Prize. As shocked as I am over this development, I would think that his top advisors, if not the man himself, would want to protect that award and prove to us naysayers that he does indeed deserve it. Slapping butts with the Chinese president – who recently allowed the execution of two Tibetans who participated in the deadly protests against Chinese oppression in Tibet last year – won’t get Obama any closer to winning international approval on his ability to make equal rights a priority. Especially when the Dalai Lama is a fellow Nobel prize winner himself.

The Times of India had this to say on October 6, before the Jintao/Obama meeting even took place:

“The loud sucking noise you hear? That’s President Barack Obama kissing up to the Chinese.

At least that’s what supporters of the Dalai Lama would have you believe after the U.S President passed up a meeting with the Tibetan leader in Washington D.C. this week – ostensibly to not offend Beijing ahead of Obama’s visit to China next month.

It’s the first time in ten visits to the U.S. in 18 years that the Dalai Lama has failed to meet with the American president. The political and diplomatic slight to the man widely admired in the US has brought forth a volley of criticism against Obama, hitherto hailed a champion of human rights.”

The China-Tibet issue is not the only tolerance card Obama has left undealt. He has yet to ban CIA-organized “extraordinary renditions” – in which suspected terrorists are abducted and shipped offshore, interrogated and usually tortured – despite his supposed opposition to the use of coercive cross-examination techniques.

In fact, Obama’s softening backbone also seems to apply to his definition of torture and consequences for those who practice it. His condemnation of waterboarding last year ended in a retraction to press charges against CIA officials who had employed the tactic. He claims that instead of rehashing the past – and squabbling over wrongs committed by the Bush administration – he and his team were better off focusing their energy on the future. That’s all fine and dandy, except that it sets a mean precedent: if Bush’s authorization of torture was acceptable based on legal rationale, then what is stopping Obama’s administration from following suit?

I don’t doubt that Obama, the man, is against torture, is pro-human rights, is looking out for the genuine good will of every man, woman and child in America. Behind all the media and PR hype, there is a strong, intelligent, liberal and effective man who deserves to be leader, president, Nobel prize holder (perhaps).

But without some of that early grit and resolve that made so many vote for Obama, he’s bound to lose his head among the many self-serving and manipulative world leaders hoping to profit from his hyper-egalitarian nature. And there’s simply nothing human or right about that.

The Online Game of Trust

I still remember one of the lessons I learned in my ninth grade French class. It was about cultural differences and what we should be prepared for, assuming we ever A) made it through high school French, thus gaining an only slightly pathetic capacity to speak the language and then B) actually got to the Motherland one day, in which case we could use said pathetic French in our daily interactions with real, actual French people.

Among our required reading, I distinctly remember a three-word phrase that seemed to epitomize the mysterious Français at the time: “Stranger means Danger.” The line in one of our books told us that the French wouldn’t smile at us in line for the bank or sitting on the bus, but that we shouldn’t take it personally. They were just sussing us out before making sure they could trust us.

While I now, years later, try to figure out what sitting on a bus seat has to do with trust, I realize that this little phrase sums up quite a bit about how the French interact, in contrast to us American folk. But while “Stranger means Danger” was, at the time, most likely meant to refer to a trip to the bakery, it has larger implications for how the French live their lives today, specifically regarding the worldwide web.

Take Facebook, for example, which has become the most used social networking website in the world as of January 2009, according to ComScore. While America still wins big, with more than 700 million users, Facebook is steadily gaining momentum in France, where it recently edged out its main competitor Skyrock to become number one. With all these enthusiastic users, virtual friends must be hurtling through cyberspace at warp speed, right? Well…

Go on any American’s Facebook page and they’ve got upwards of 300 friends, maybe even 600. I know a guy who reached the 1000-friend mark last month. Ask him if he regularly sends personal messages or writes on the Wall of all these “friends” and he’ll laugh at you incredulously. But take your average French user, and you’ll find that each of their Facebook friends are real-life friends as well.

“I don’t understand people who accept or add me as a friend and then make no contact with me whatsoever,” spouts my French friend Jean, over a coffee. Our mutual friend Cecile agrees: “I had a guy from high school try to add me as a friend. But it’s been years since he’s contacted me so I ignored his request. If I barely know him then what’s the point?”

The point, for Americans, seems to be the opposite of the French: Add them as a friend first; make them a friend later. Or maybe never. My French co-workers were mildly horrified to hear that I had added many a Facebook friend with the click of my mouse, never to have any contact with them ever again.

So, who’s got it right? The French, who tend to take a guarded view of the intangible internet friend, or the open-armed, smiling American?

Being too trusting can cost more than just the unwanted online pal. In 2007, Katherine Ann Olsen of Minnesota lost her life after innocently responding to a babysitting ad on the online classifieds website, Craigslist, by a woman named “Amy.” However, Amy turned out to be 19-year-old John Michael Anderson, who lived with his parents, and was waiting to shoot Olsen in the back when she turned up. Craigslist again made headlines this past April, when a Boston University medical student allegedly killed a New York City masseuse after responding to her Craigslist ad for massages.

Of course, it’s not to say that the French don’t ever get themselves into online trouble. But, it just doesn’t seem to be quite to the same extent as the ol’ Americans. Or maybe, as the old adage goes, everything in France happens ten years later than in America. In this case, I hope not.

The online dating world seems to be the one area where France and the United States are at match point. With millions of users in each country, finding love online is no longer stigmatized as the lonely way to search for a mate.

Marc Simoncini, the founder of popular French site Meetic, says that online dating is different depending on your culture. In a 2007 Times Online article, he said, “There are only two philosophies in this business… the American philosophy and the French one. The Americans try to sell you love. We sell une rencontre [an encounter] and I don’t care what happens afterwards.”

So as French and American internet users attempt to navigate the online world successfully (dodging sexual predators, murderers and casual friends when necessary) it looks like love is still the one thing that connects us. Maybe strangers aren’t so dangerous anymore.