AUSTRALIAN PRAYER NETWORK NEWSLETTER
* GADDAFI’S DAUGHTER GIVES RARE GLIMPSE INTO THE LIFE OF HER
FAMILY
* POKIE USE TRIPLES IN CHRISTCHURCH SINCE EARTHQUAKE
* NIGERIAN CHURCH LEADERS CALL FOR ENQUIRY INTO ELECTION
VIOLENCE
* SYRIAN OPPOSITION DEMANDS REFORMS
* U.K. MUM OVERJOYED HER SON SURVIVED ABORTION
* THOUSANDS OF WEST PAPUANS RALLY TO DEMAND REFERENDUM FOR
SELF-DETERMINATION
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GADDAFI’S DAUGHTER
GIVES RARE GLIMPSE INTO THE LIFE OF HER FAMILY
Aisha el-Qaddafi, the daughter of Col. el-Qaddafi (Gaddafi) of Libya,
tells her three young children bedtime stories about the afterlife.
She says, they are especially appropriate now, “because in a time of
war you never know when a rocket or a bomb might hit you, and that
will be the end.” In a rare interview, Ms. Qaddafi, 36, a
Libyan-trained lawyer who once worked on Saddam Hussein’s legal
defence team, offered a glimpse into the mind-set of the increasingly
isolated family at the core of the battle for Libya. She dismissed
the rebels as “terrorists” but suggested that some former Qaddafi
officials now in the opposition’s governing council still “keep in
touch with us.” She pleaded for dialogue and talked about democratic reforms, but she
dismissed the rebels as unfit for such talks because of their use of
violence. She also hurled personal barbs at President Obama and
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The interview which went for more
than an hour took place just hours before a NATO airstrike disrupted
state television and attacked the Libyan leader’s compound in
Tripoli. Ms. Qaddafi said the crisis had pulled the family together
“like one hand.” Ms. Qaddafi said that she and her seven brothers
“have a dialogue between us and exchange points of view” before
anyone takes a major step in their common defence. She acknowledged she had seen news reports that her siblings had
proposed easing their father from power in a transition under the
direction of her brother Seif al-Islam, but she declined to comment
on the details. She also pointedly declined to answer when asked if
Abdel Fattah Younes, a top rebel military official who was a long
time interior minister, was among the leaders who had kept in touch
with the Qaddafi family. “They say to us that they have their own
families, daughters, sons, spouses, and they fear for them, and that
is why they have taken those positions,” she said of those rebel
leaders.
“There are many members of the council who have worked with my father
for 42 years and been loyal to him. Do you think they would just go
like that?” Instead of the defiance and vows of retribution issued
by her father and her brother Seif, Ms. Qaddafi focused on how the
West would rue the chaos she predicted would engulf a post-Qaddafi
Libya. When pressed repeatedly on how her family could stay in power,
she said more than once, “We have a great hope in God.” Ms Qaddafi
has appeared in public twice since the bombings began, but she seldom
speaks in public.
During the interview, she laughed at her fate, recalling how the
United Nations, after “begging” her to be an envoy for peace in the
past, has now referred her to the International Criminal Court. She
said her experience as a volunteer on Saddam Hussein’s defence team
offered relevant parallels. “The opposition in Iraq told the West
that when you come to Iraq they will greet you with roses,” she said.
“Almost 10 years later they are receiving the Americans with bullets,
and, believe me, the situation in Libya will be much worse.” She
taunted President Obama saying that he had “achieved nothing so far”.

She also posed a question to Mrs Clinton: “Why didn’t you leave the
White House when you found out about the cheating of your husband?”
Even as she deprecated the American leaders, she repeatedly called
for talks. At the same time however, she ruled out any dialogue with
the Libyan rebels dismissing them as “terrorists” who “are just
fighting for the sake of fighting.” Under her brother Seif’s
unofficial leadership, she said, the Libyan government had been on
the verge of unveiling a constitution as a step toward democratic
reform when “this tragedy happened and spoiled things.” She complained of the “betrayal” of Arabs whose causes her father had
supported and the Western allies to whom he had turned over his
weapons of mass destruction. “Is this the reward that we get?” she
asked. “This would lead every country that has weapons of mass
destruction to keep them or make more so they will not meet the same
fate as Libya.” Without Colonel Qaddafi, she predicted, illegal
immigrants from Africa would pour into Europe, Islamic radicals would
establish a base on the Mediterranean’s shores, and Libyan tribes
would turn their guns on one another.
Citing unconfirmed Libyan intelligence reports, she asserted that the
weapons-starved rebels had actually sold arms to the Islamist groups
Hamas and Hezbollah. “When my father was there, see how safe Europe
was and how safe Libya was?” she asked. Ms Qaddafi initially
dismissed reports of the handful of nights two months ago when
protesters took over the streets of Tripoli and almost every other
big city, pulling down Qaddafi posters and burning police stations.
Then, told that journalists had seen the evidence, she argued the
destruction proved they were not civilian protesters but
“saboteurs.” She also appeared to dismiss witnesses’ accounts of Colonel Qaddafi’s
forces shooting unarmed demonstrators. “I am not sure that happened,”
she said. “But let’s say it did: it was limited in scope.” As for her
father’s state of mind, she said with a laugh that he was not worried
at all. “He is as strong as the world knows him,” she said. “He is
quite sure that the Libyan people are loyal to him.” Her family still
hoped, she said, to go back to its previous position, what she called
“a return to normal.” But, she added, “of course we can expedite that
if NATO will stop bombing us.”

Source: Intercessors
Network
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POKIE USE TRIPLES
IN CHRISTCHURCH SINCE EARTHQUAKE
Residents of quake-devastated Christchurch have turned to gambling in
the wake of the disaster that felled their picturesque town centre
and killed 181 people. New figures show that the use of pokie
machines has tripled since the 6.3-magnitude earthquake hit New
Zealand’s second biggest city on February 22. This is despite the
closure of a quarter of the city’s pokie venues and the exodus of
10,000 residents after the killer quake. The surge in gambling is
worrying New Zealand’s Problem Gambling Foundation, whose spokesman
Tony Milne said venues had been “incredibly busy”. “Right from the start of the day to the end of the day, they were
pretty much full,” Milne said of 15 suburban pubs. “People are
gambling as a relief for all the stresses, or as a means of escaping.
People are also desperate for money and are trying to increase what
little money they have. But if you play the pokie machines you are
going to lose; they design them that way,” he said. The concerning
trend matches with other figures showing unemployment, problem
drinking, rates of depression, violence and drug use have all spiked
in Christchurch since the disaster. Tourism is down 30%, rents on business space have increased and home
values in many suburbs have dropped dramatically. Figures from
Statistics New Zealand confirm that thousands of residents fled the
city in the month after the quake, with many displaced families
moving to Australia. New Zealand’s Revenue Minister, Peter Dunne,
said the gambling statistics were “no surprise”. “I am not at all
surprised that gambling on poker machines in Christchurch has
increased significantly since the quake, nor that drinking issues
seem to have risen, and even smoking cessation stalled,” Mr Dunne
said. “We are dealing with a lot of stressed people, and human nature can
often take us to our weaknesses and frailties at times of
extraordinary pressure and strain,” he said. The city’s Salvation
Army spokesman Peter Jamieson also confirmed the problem and said
there was a real concern as to how agencies would cope with the
“splurge”. The New Zealand government has pledged to spend $NZ8.5
billion ($6.3 billion) on rebuilding and supporting Christchurch
through its recovery from the quake, the country’s biggest natural
disaster in 80 years.
Source: Intercessors
Network
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NIGERIAN CHURCH
LEADERS CALL FOR ENQUIRY INTO ELECTION VIOLENCE
Christian leaders have called for an investigation into political
violence that has targeted churches and Christian homes in Nigeria,
with at least one clergyman saying that Islamic attacks following the
election of a Christian president were premeditated. Pastor Emmanuel
Nuhu said at a press briefing that the religious component of the
political violence should not be discounted.  ¢â‚¬Å“How do you explain a
spontaneous call to Muslim prayer across the city at 9.00PM at
night. During the night, the shout of  ¢â‚¬ËœAllah Akbar ¢â‚¬â„¢ rang out as
Muslims began to troop towards the mosques and designated areas. At 10.00PM after another call on loudspeakers  ¢â‚¬“ this time a
spontaneous shout of  ¢â‚¬Å“Allah Akbar ¢â‚¬  arose from the mosques. Most of
the streets were occupied by Muslims and bursts of gunfire shook the
city? ¢â‚¬  Pastor Kure said.  ¢â‚¬Å“This was repeated a few times, and the
killings and burnings began. ¢â‚¬  Christians suffered many casualties
after supporters of Muslim presidential candidate Muhammudu Buhari
lost the April 16 federal election to Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian.
Muslim rioters claimed vote fraud, although international observers
praised the polls as the fairest since
1999.

As many as 300 Christians were slain, more than 200 church buildings
were burned and 14,000 fled their homes after Islamic attacks.  ¢â‚¬Å“The
violence was both political and religious, because Christians and
churches were the main targets for the destruction by the
perpetrators of the violence, ¢â‚¬  the chairman of the Christian
Association of Nigeria (CAN), Peter Jatau said.  ¢â‚¬Å“We feel that the
time has come for the federal government to take decisive steps to
stop the persistent carnage and bring the perpetrators to justice, ¢â‚¬ 
the CAN leaders said. Bishop Jonas Katung, national vice president of
the North Central Zone, said that the post-election attacks were  ¢â‚¬Å“a
descent into barbarism ¢â‚¬ . While Christians do not call for vengeance, Katung said there was a
need to identify those who instigated the attacks on Christians to
prevent them from occurring anew.  ¢â‚¬Å“We refuse to accept the subterfuge
of  ¢â‚¬Ëœspontaneous combustion, ¢â‚¬â„¢ ¢â‚¬  he said.  ¢â‚¬Å“Years of inaction by
Nigeria ¢â‚¬â„¢s federal and state governments have created a climate of
impunity, resulting in thousands of death. Other freedom concerns in
Nigeria include the expansion of sharia law into the criminal codes
of several northern Nigerian states and discrimination against
minority communities. ¢â‚¬ 
Source: Compass
Direct
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SYRIAN OPPOSITION
DEMANDS REFORMS
Syrian opposition figures said their “grassroots revolution” will
break the regime of President Bashar al-Assad unless he leads a
transition to democracy. The statement from an umbrella group of
opposition activists in Syria and abroad called the National
Initiative for Change said a democratic transition will “safeguard
the nation from falling into a period of violence, chaos and civil
war. If the Syrian president does not go, there is no alternative for
Syrians except to go down the same path as did the Tunisians,
Egyptians and Libyans before them,” the statement said. The
opposition is getting more organized as the uprising gains momentum,
but it is still largely a grassroots operation. There are no credible opposition leaders who have risen to the level
of being considered as a possible successor to Assad. A relentless
crackdown since mid-March has killed hundreds across Syria. That has
only emboldened protesters who started their revolt with calls for
modest reforms but are now increasingly demanding Assad’s downfall.
One Syrian resident said security agents were going house-to-house,
carrying lists of wanted people and conducting raids. If the agents
did not find the person they were looking for, they took his
relatives into custody, the resident said. Syria has banned nearly all foreign media and restricted access to
trouble spots since the uprising began, making it almost impossible
to verify the dramatic events shaking one of the most authoritarian
regimes in the Arab world. Amnesty International said the UN Security
Council must refer the situation in Syria to the International
Criminal Court. “The Syrian government is clearly trying to shatter
the will of those peacefully expressing dissent by shelling them,
firing on them and locking them up,” said Salil Shetty, Amnesty
International’s Secretary General.

Source: Intercessors
Network
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U.K. MUM OVERJOYED
HER SON SURVIVED ABORTION
An English woman whose two previous children had inherited
life-threatening kidney diseases, (one subsequently died), learned
she had become pregnant again in spite of using contraceptives. She
decided to terminate the child ¢â‚¬â„¢s life as she “couldn’t cope with the
anguish of losing another baby.” The abortion was performed, but
sometime later, she felt a “fluttering” in her abdomen and consulted
her doctor. The baby had miraculously survived the abortion. Angry at
first, she was told by doctors, that although this baby also had
kidney problems, he would probably survive them. The baby was born 3 months premature however his kidney damage is
minor, and he is expected to live a normal life.” I struggle to
believe what he has fought through,” she said. “But now he’s here, I
wouldn’t change it for the world.” The mother asked that her name not
be revealed. Source: Intercessors
Network
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THOUSANDS OF WEST
PAPUANS RALLY TO DEMAND REFERENDUM FOR
SELF-DETERMINATION
Thousands of the people in West Papua have rallied to demand a
referendum be held in West Papua. The demonstrations were held to
commemorate the occupation of West Papua by Indonesia in May 1, 1961.
Participants gave a mandate to the International Lawyers for West
Papua and International Parliamentarians for West Papua to bring the
political issue of West Papua to the International Court of Justice.
The rally was held to demonstrate to the Indonesian and
international community that the people of West Papua want
self-determination through a Referendum as a final and democratic
solution.

Source: Religious Media
Agency