Mukherjee budget menaces Indian forests (OneWorld.net)

Feb 28 (OneWorld.net) - India is the first major economy to present an annual budget since the disruption of oil production in Libya. Plans for the economy in 2011/12 revealed earlier today surprised observers by making no provision for volatile oil prices.

Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, is bound to be challenged for speaking for almost two hours without a single reference to the subject. The price of oil has increased by more than 35% over the last year.

Like many countries with predominantly poor populations, India holds down prices of food, fuel and fertilizer through subsidies. In the last financial year these subsidies accounted for 12.5% of government expenditure, rising sharply in recent months as the oil market spiked.

Representing the world's largest democracy, the Indian government is acutely aware that 80% of its population of 1.2 billion survives on less than $2 per day. Rampant inflation in food and other essentials means almost certain political death at the hands of the electorate.

Last Wednesday New Delhi was the scene of noisy anti-government protests organised by the trade union movement. Failure to combat inflation by negligent and corrupt government ministries was the call to action.

Annual food price inflation in India is already running at 10%. Rising fuel prices may make matters worse through higher transport and fertilizer costs.

Many observers anticipated that Mr.Mukherjee would make provision for increased subsidies to assist the poor, taking the risk of a deeper fiscal deficit.

The minister is gambling that good harvests in 2010 will be repeated this year. In his speech he departed from traditional budget rigour in conceding that: "like last year, I seek the blessings of Lord Indra to bestow on us timely and bountiful monsoons."

Other developing countries may be less trusting to fate. But they will also look to India for pointers on the shared challenge of reducing dependence on oil. The budget speech did hint at a new emphasis which may alarm environmentalists.

As for many countries in Africa, the cheapest and quickest escape from oil for India is to accelerate exploitation of its ample coal reserves.

Such a move would undermine the country's pledge to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to reduce the energy intensity of GDP by 20% between 2005 and 2020. Coal reserves also tend to be located in protected forest regions.

India does not lack for alternative advice on how to kick the oil habit. Towards a Green Economy is the title of a major report published by the UN Environment Programme last Monday.

It encourages developing countries to abandon subsidies of fossil fuel products and grasp the nettle of low carbon investment. UNEP claims that "the report comprehensively challenges the myth of a trade off between environmental investments and economic growth."

The events of a busy budget week in New Delhi suggest rather more nuanced thinking by the Indian government. "A developing country like ours must find ways to strike an appropriate balance between environmental imperatives and developmental needs," warned Indian President Pratibha Patil.

Her speech marked the ceremonial opening of the parliamentary budget session which took place on the same day as the UNEP report was released.

Mukherjee repeated this sentiment in his budget presentation and then went further: "A Group of Ministers has been set up to consider all issues relating to reconciliation of environmental concerns.....including those related to infrastructure and mining," he said.

These statements are ambiguous in their intent but the choreography appears to be circling the embattled champion of India's environmental movement, minister Jairam Ramesh. Famous for enforcing environmental laws in the teeth of powerful business interests, Ramesh has lately been accused of choking off economic growth with his green principles.

Within the Indian cabinet, this argument is most vigorously pursued by the Minister for Coal. Shriprakash Jaiswal is unhappy that Ramesh has banned the development of 203 coal blocks located in sensitive forest areas.

"Saving forests is indeed crucial, but not at the cost of compromising with the nation's industrialisation and growth," Mr. Jaiswal told a press conference on Wednesday.

Greenpeace India is alarmed that the environment minister may be unable to withstand an ambush by his colleagues. A staff blogger claims that Ramesh "has drastically reduced the areas demarcated as No Go zones."

"What do you want: forests or coal?" is the current lead campaign of Greenpeace India. As the complex interaction between poverty, food and energy evolves over coming months, the question will have to be answered.

More Information:

Support the Forests the Greenpeace India campaign

OneWorld India briefings

* Bill Gunyon is Editor of OneWorld Guides

View the original article here

G20 ministers reject calls for climate justice (OneWorld.net)

LONDON, Feb 21 (OneWorld.net) - Proposals for a global financial transaction tax to help the development of poor countries affected by climate change have been ignored by the world's leading finance ministers.

The commitment of the French hosts to put this tax at the heart of the G20 agenda appears to have been lost in translation. The final communique of the meeting in Paris which concluded on Saturday was conspicuously silent on the subject.

The only consolation for the French was an expression of German support for a transaction tax together with news that the philanthropist, Bill Gates, has agreed to work with President Nicolas Sarkozy on innovative ways to raise funds for poor countries.

The idea of a tiny percentage tax on investment and currency transactions featured in the list of options for climate change financing submitted by a High-Level Advisory Group to the UN Secretary General in November 2010.

The levy is strongly supported by the international NGO movement. A global day of action across 25 countries was coordinated by Oxfam and other groups on the day before the start of the G20 meeting.

"This is the zeitgeist tax (which) would be like a breath of fresh air clearing away the stench of bankers' bonuses," said Luc Lempriere, executive director of Oxfam France.

European anti-poverty and climate change campaigners promote the concept as the Robin Hood tax. In the US, a national initiative has been sponsored by veteran Democrat Congressman, Pete Stark.

The introduction to Congress of his Investing in Our Future Act was timed to coincide with the global day of action.

The Act would impose a small fee on currency transactions in the United States, raising funds for a range of causes including mitigation of worldwide climate change. Over thirty US campaign groups have written to President Obama urging him to support the Act.

Global campaigners for a transaction tax have pinned great hopes on President Sarkozy as the champion of their cause. He is believed to hold the view that the financial sector benefited the most from the boom years whilst swallowing much of the resources committed to recovery when the bubble burst.

At a January press conference held at the Elysee Palace to mark the launch of the French presidency of the G20, Sarkozy said, "France considers this tax to be a moral reckoning for the financial crisis."

Expectations of foreign aid to support adaptation to climate change have been voiced in ethical terms long before the banking crisis broke in 2008. Developing countries are aggrieved that their economic growth prospects are undermined by the impact of global warming for which they are not responsible.

Shortly after the Sarkozy speech, this moral dimension of climate change was explored in a panel discussion at UN headquarters in New York. The debate on "Climate Finance: ethical considerations of scale, sources and governance" was organized by the UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service and the New York Office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

Whilst speakers were united in interpreting climate change as a "profound moral problem," they differed in locating the heart of the dilemma.

Angela Anderson, Program Director of the US Climate Action Network, felt that the most important ethical consideration is the human suffering amongst the poor that will be the consequence of failure to stabilize the climate.

A more philosophical stance was explored by Martin Lees, former secretary of the Club of Rome. "In gambling with the future of humanity….do we have the right to gratify desires now at the expense of future generations?" he asked, drawing attention to the non-linear risk posed by climate change.

The Ugandan chair of the Least Developed Countries Expert Group, Fred Onduri, prefers to address ethical considerations by straightforward reference to dollars. Rich countries have failed to deliver funding promises which are in any event insufficient to tackle the damage caused by climate change.

Mark Fulton of Deutsche Bank, a lone representative of the banking sector, sought to explain that, in the real world, the fiduciary obligations of financial managers compel them to conduct their business by reference to regulations as much as ethics.

He stressed that governments will not tamper with regulations unless they believe that voters demand change and that powerful vested interests can be set aside.

This proved to the position taken on Saturday by the finance ministers of the world's 20 most prosperous economies. They were disinclined to consider the ethics of global financial management.

A further moral examination is imminent. President Obama's 2012 budget presented to Congress last Monday includes a total of $1.3 billion for climate change finance to assist developing countries.

This is the third annual instalment of the promise of "fast start finance" negotiated by Obama at the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009.

The Republicans are in no mood to approve funding for foreign aid or climate change, let alone both. Will Congress honour this international commitment?

More Information:

Climate Finance: Ethical Considerations

from UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service

OneWorld Climate Change and Poverty Guide

* Bill Gunyon is Editor of OneWorld Guides

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WHO ASKED US?: How I Dropped Back Into School (OneWorld.net)

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 17 (New America Media) - Back in 2009, one out of every six high school seniors in Santa Clara County dropped out of school. One of them was Jacob Jimenez, a writer for Silicon Valley De-Bug. But this year, Jimenez decided to drop back in.

Today was my first day of school, kind of. It's been so long since I've been a student, that it all feels new to me.

The last time I was in school was my sophomore year of high school. Back then, I wouldn't go to class because I thought the teachers didn't like me, and I felt like they treated me different than other students. At the time, I was mostly hanging out with friends, cutting school, smoking, going downtown and getting myself into anything other than school.

So arriving at the high school campus today for the first time in two years, I felt a little weird. Sitting in the classrooms, I could feel the gaze of all the other kids, looking at me funny. It felt like I didn't belong.

One of my new teachers is cool. Her name is "Mrs. J". I have a tattoo on my hand and she made me put a band-aid over it. Having her tell me I'd have to hide my tattoo was a low point of my day, but I also knew it was in my best interest.

During lunch, I worried that I wasn't going to know anyone, or meet anyone new. I felt out of place at first, but then I saw one of my old friends from the sixth grade, and that put me at ease.

I also saw one of my ex-girlfriends from 8th grade. Our relationship was fine, but she acted like a little kid, so I broke up with her. I guess I broke her heart and her dad didn't like that one bit. I'm not sure if he still wants to beat me up, but seeing her again made me think about relationships. Sometimes I think that having a girlfriend - a square, "go to every class", nerdy type girlfriend - might push me to do well in school and help me get to class on time.

Thinking even further back to when I was in kindergarten, I'm reminded of my mom. I never wanted to be anywhere but around her. In fact, I loved my mom too much to be in school. I thought she could and would do anything in the world for me.

Later on, when I was growing up and getting into trouble, she would come to my school and fight for me every time. Sometimes, I would get myself into trouble just to see her.

But a few years ago, my mom passed away. And when she did, there was no longer anyone there to fight for me like she had.

Other than the teachers who made me feel uncomfortable, my mom's passing was a huge reason why I dropped out. On some days I would just stay at my house, so that I wouldn't have to hear or see my teachers. At home, I could avoid them completely and just hang out, alone.

While other kids might have reacted differently to their mom passing away, all I really wanted to do was run away from things and never return. Eventually though, I arrived at this question: What will that solve? In retrospect, I think that I handled the situation more maturely than other kids, and a lot of that is due to having community support: It was after talking to a bunch of the guys at Silicon Valley De-Bug that I decided to re-enroll in school, two long years after I had dropped out.

Now that I'm back in the classroom and have some support, I think about my future more than ever. I want to open my own business - maybe a restaurant - because my mother loved to cook and it’s something she taught me. I'd like to name the restaurant "Mays", after her. My public high school might not teach me culinary arts, but I know that with support, I can continue to go to school and be the person my mom would have wanted me to be.

For those that know me, they also must know that I hated school for the longest time, so going back to class now is a big deal. I'd like to thank De-Bug and my friend Daniel for helping me make a fresh start at school and in life. I know my mom would be very happy for me, because I've changed. I know that if she were here she would say, "Thank you for helping my son. I'm glad my son found a place where he can go and feel good about himself."

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WHO ASKED US?: How I Dropped Back Into School (OneWorld.net)

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 17 (New America Media) - Back in 2009, one out of every six high school seniors in Santa Clara County dropped out of school. One of them was Jacob Jimenez, a writer for Silicon Valley De-Bug. But this year, Jimenez decided to drop back in.

Today was my first day of school, kind of. It's been so long since I've been a student, that it all feels new to me.

The last time I was in school was my sophomore year of high school. Back then, I wouldn't go to class because I thought the teachers didn't like me, and I felt like they treated me different than other students. At the time, I was mostly hanging out with friends, cutting school, smoking, going downtown and getting myself into anything other than school.

So arriving at the high school campus today for the first time in two years, I felt a little weird. Sitting in the classrooms, I could feel the gaze of all the other kids, looking at me funny. It felt like I didn't belong.

One of my new teachers is cool. Her name is "Mrs. J". I have a tattoo on my hand and she made me put a band-aid over it. Having her tell me I'd have to hide my tattoo was a low point of my day, but I also knew it was in my best interest.

During lunch, I worried that I wasn't going to know anyone, or meet anyone new. I felt out of place at first, but then I saw one of my old friends from the sixth grade, and that put me at ease.

I also saw one of my ex-girlfriends from 8th grade. Our relationship was fine, but she acted like a little kid, so I broke up with her. I guess I broke her heart and her dad didn't like that one bit. I'm not sure if he still wants to beat me up, but seeing her again made me think about relationships. Sometimes I think that having a girlfriend - a square, "go to every class", nerdy type girlfriend - might push me to do well in school and help me get to class on time.

Thinking even further back to when I was in kindergarten, I'm reminded of my mom. I never wanted to be anywhere but around her. In fact, I loved my mom too much to be in school. I thought she could and would do anything in the world for me.

Later on, when I was growing up and getting into trouble, she would come to my school and fight for me every time. Sometimes, I would get myself into trouble just to see her.

But a few years ago, my mom passed away. And when she did, there was no longer anyone there to fight for me like she had.

Other than the teachers who made me feel uncomfortable, my mom's passing was a huge reason why I dropped out. On some days I would just stay at my house, so that I wouldn't have to hear or see my teachers. At home, I could avoid them completely and just hang out, alone.

While other kids might have reacted differently to their mom passing away, all I really wanted to do was run away from things and never return. Eventually though, I arrived at this question: What will that solve? In retrospect, I think that I handled the situation more maturely than other kids, and a lot of that is due to having community support: It was after talking to a bunch of the guys at Silicon Valley De-Bug that I decided to re-enroll in school, two long years after I had dropped out.

Now that I'm back in the classroom and have some support, I think about my future more than ever. I want to open my own business - maybe a restaurant - because my mother loved to cook and it’s something she taught me. I'd like to name the restaurant "Mays", after her. My public high school might not teach me culinary arts, but I know that with support, I can continue to go to school and be the person my mom would have wanted me to be.

For those that know me, they also must know that I hated school for the longest time, so going back to class now is a big deal. I'd like to thank De-Bug and my friend Daniel for helping me make a fresh start at school and in life. I know my mom would be very happy for me, because I've changed. I know that if she were here she would say, "Thank you for helping my son. I'm glad my son found a place where he can go and feel good about himself."

» ALL THE LATEST HEADLINES

View the original article here

WHO ASKED US?: How I Dropped Back Into School (OneWorld.net)

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 17 (New America Media) - Back in 2009, one out of every six high school seniors in Santa Clara County dropped out of school. One of them was Jacob Jimenez, a writer for Silicon Valley De-Bug. But this year, Jimenez decided to drop back in.

Today was my first day of school, kind of. It's been so long since I've been a student, that it all feels new to me.

The last time I was in school was my sophomore year of high school. Back then, I wouldn't go to class because I thought the teachers didn't like me, and I felt like they treated me different than other students. At the time, I was mostly hanging out with friends, cutting school, smoking, going downtown and getting myself into anything other than school.

So arriving at the high school campus today for the first time in two years, I felt a little weird. Sitting in the classrooms, I could feel the gaze of all the other kids, looking at me funny. It felt like I didn't belong.

One of my new teachers is cool. Her name is "Mrs. J". I have a tattoo on my hand and she made me put a band-aid over it. Having her tell me I'd have to hide my tattoo was a low point of my day, but I also knew it was in my best interest.

During lunch, I worried that I wasn't going to know anyone, or meet anyone new. I felt out of place at first, but then I saw one of my old friends from the sixth grade, and that put me at ease.

I also saw one of my ex-girlfriends from 8th grade. Our relationship was fine, but she acted like a little kid, so I broke up with her. I guess I broke her heart and her dad didn't like that one bit. I'm not sure if he still wants to beat me up, but seeing her again made me think about relationships. Sometimes I think that having a girlfriend - a square, "go to every class", nerdy type girlfriend - might push me to do well in school and help me get to class on time.

Thinking even further back to when I was in kindergarten, I'm reminded of my mom. I never wanted to be anywhere but around her. In fact, I loved my mom too much to be in school. I thought she could and would do anything in the world for me.

Later on, when I was growing up and getting into trouble, she would come to my school and fight for me every time. Sometimes, I would get myself into trouble just to see her.

But a few years ago, my mom passed away. And when she did, there was no longer anyone there to fight for me like she had.

Other than the teachers who made me feel uncomfortable, my mom's passing was a huge reason why I dropped out. On some days I would just stay at my house, so that I wouldn't have to hear or see my teachers. At home, I could avoid them completely and just hang out, alone.

While other kids might have reacted differently to their mom passing away, all I really wanted to do was run away from things and never return. Eventually though, I arrived at this question: What will that solve? In retrospect, I think that I handled the situation more maturely than other kids, and a lot of that is due to having community support: It was after talking to a bunch of the guys at Silicon Valley De-Bug that I decided to re-enroll in school, two long years after I had dropped out.

Now that I'm back in the classroom and have some support, I think about my future more than ever. I want to open my own business - maybe a restaurant - because my mother loved to cook and it’s something she taught me. I'd like to name the restaurant "Mays", after her. My public high school might not teach me culinary arts, but I know that with support, I can continue to go to school and be the person my mom would have wanted me to be.

For those that know me, they also must know that I hated school for the longest time, so going back to class now is a big deal. I'd like to thank De-Bug and my friend Daniel for helping me make a fresh start at school and in life. I know my mom would be very happy for me, because I've changed. I know that if she were here she would say, "Thank you for helping my son. I'm glad my son found a place where he can go and feel good about himself."

» ALL THE LATEST HEADLINES

View the original article here

Hillary Clinton backs move to end hidden hunger (OneWorld.net)

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has endorsed efforts by world food experts to improve coordination between agriculture, nutrition and health programmes. "This issue cuts to the core of a global crisis that demands action," she said.

"We have been working separately," was a common admission amongst invited leaders of the three life science sectors at a conference in New Delhi which concluded on Saturday.

Entitled "Leveraging Agriculture for Improving Nutrition and Health", the event was organized by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

News that world food prices continue to scale all-time highs lent urgency to the discussions. Poor families forced to spend a large proportion of their income on food are heading for difficulties.

Several delegates prefaced their presentations with the statistics that 900 million people experience hunger, whilst a similar number in richer countries are classified as obese.

A quarter of all children aged under five are underweight. Much of the world's farming, whether high or low intensive, is environmentally unsustainable.

As the political spotlight increasingly falls on the food crisis, the Director General of IFPRI, Shenggen Fan, wants action. "We now have a unique opportunity to look carefully at our agricultural system and to determine how to make it function more effectively for people's well-being," he said.

The conference was opened by the Indian prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh. Describing malnutrition as "hidden hunger", he stressed the importance of essential nutrients in the diet of mother and child in the 1,000 days following conception.

Speaking by video-link, Hillary Clinton promised that "the United States is committed to this fight by investing in its Feed the Future and Global Health Initiatives." Dr Singh also listed government programmes such as the Midday Meal Scheme which reaches 120 million Indian children.

Neither the Secretary of State nor the prime minister mentioned the funding difficulties that threaten their programmes.

Only last week Republican members of Congress were spoiling for a fight over President Obama's Foreign Affairs budget. And last Wednesday the Times of India described the government's latest budget allocation for school feeding as "paltry".

The conference agenda too was somewhat reticent on the question of finance. A painful reminder of the high cost of interventions in agriculture emerged from China during the event.

According to Bloomberg reports, the Chinese government is to allocate $2 billion for emergency irrigation measures to tackle severe drought in the wheat-producing northern regions of the country.

This is equivalent to almost half of the entire World Food Programme budget for assisting 72 countries in 2011.

Many of these beneficiary countries are in Africa where the need for major investment in agriculture is acute. John Kufuor, former president of Ghana, told the conference that "the (green) revolution which has transformed agriculture around the world has largely passed Africa by..... farmers are still scratching a living from the land by hand like our ancestors used to do."

One of the architects of the green revolution in India, Professor M.S.Swaminathan, derives more comfort from his ancestors. He pointed out that proposals to integrate food, nutrition and health echo the holistic approach of "indigenous systems of medicine."

Defying his 85 years in a fluent speech, Swaminathan observed that Ayurvedic treatment is still practised in India. "It deals with the diet of the person - we should combine ancient wisdom with modern science," he said.

Professor Swaminathan is a member of the committee responsible for drafting an Indian Right to Food Act. Prime minister Singh had taken the opportunity in his conference speech to repeat a commitment to present this Act to parliament.

The extent to which this promised legislation merges the rights to adequate food, minimum standards of nutrition and basic health care will be a measure of the influence of the IFPRI conference.

The Way Forward, an IFPRI document aiming to distil the conference debates, emphasises the importance of health education, both at household level and for professional practitioners. "Let’s make sure that students in agriculture, health, and nutrition don't graduate without knowing something of the other two sectors," the document pleads.

"This is an idea whose time has come," concluded Shenggen Fan.

* More Information:

IFPRI Conference website

OneWorld Food Security Guide

* Bill Gunyon is Editor of OneWorld Guides

View the original article here

Muslims and Christians Protest as One (OneWorld.net)

CAIRO, Feb 9 (IPS) - Over recent years, Egypt has witnessed mounting tension between its Muslim majority and its sizeable Coptic Christian minority. But in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the site of ongoing mass protests against the ruling regime, members of both faiths chant in unison: "Muslim, Christian, doesn't matter; We're all in this boat together!"
Since Jan. 25, Egyptians countrywide have hit the streets in the hundreds of thousands - even millions - to demand the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak and his 30-year-old regime. The first week of demonstrations was marked by almost daily clashes between police and protesters, in which hundreds were killed and thousands injured.
The demonstrations were initially organized by online activist groups of no particular religious affiliation, such as the 6 April protest movement and the Youth Movement for Freedom and Justice. Nevertheless, some commentators have attempted to paint the uprising as a would-be "Iran-style" Islamic revolution.
In statements that would later be parroted by much of the western media, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Jan. 31: "Our real fear is of a situation that could develop and which has already developed in several countries including Iran itself - repressive regimes of radical Islam."
But according to protesters arrayed in Tahrir Square, which on Tuesday was home to hundreds of thousands of protesters, Muslim-Christian unity remains a central feature of the almost daily rallies.
"There's an overwhelming sense of solidarity here between Muslims and Christians," 32-year-old Muslim protester Ahmed al-Assy told IPS. "Practically all of the protesters' rallying cries, and all the sermons led by Muslim sheikhs, stress the importance of national unity."
Violent clashes between police and protesters that took place nationwide in the first week of the uprising were accompanied by particularly moving displays of interfaith camaraderie. On several occasions, Christian demonstrators shielded their Muslim compatriots - who had paused to pray in the midst of the conflict - from attacks by aggressive police.
"During the fiercest clashes on January 28, I found a guy about my age guarding my back, who I later found out was a Christian," Yahia Roumi, a 24- year-old protester from Cairo, told IPS. "Now we're best friends; we never go to the demonstrations without one another."
The prevailing sense of national unity follows two years of steadily mounting tension between the two communities, exacerbated by occasional flare-ups of violence.
Last November witnessed clashes between Coptic demonstrators and security forces after authorities halted renovation work on a church in Cairo's Omraniya district. Along with under-representation in the top echelons of government, Egypt's Copts have long complained of stringent government restrictions on church building.
On January 1, more than 20 Christians were killed when a Coptic church in Alexandria was bombed by unknown perpetrators. While Egyptian officialdom blamed the crime on an alleged "Al-Qaeda" offshoot, the incident served to further aggravate tensions between the nation's Muslims and Christians.
The largest concentration of Christians in the Middle East, Egypt's Coptic community is thought to account for some ten percent of the country's roughly 82 million people. The rest of the population is almost entirely Muslim.
Christian participation in the ongoing wave of protests comes despite statements by Coptic leader Pope Shenouda III, in which he threw his support behind the ruling regime.
"I called the president and told him that 'all of us are with you'," Shenouda said on state television on January 30. Five days later, the pope reiterated his support for the embattled president, calling on demonstrators "to end their protests and listen to reason."
According to one Coptic priest, quoted anonymously by independent daily Al- Shorouk, Shenouda "lost a good deal of legitimacy among his flock by essentially barring Copts from joining the uprising." But despite the church's official stance on the matter, the priest added, "we nevertheless encouraged young Copts to participate."
"I don't know why Pope Shenouda wants to keep Copts from joining the uprising," said Boutros, a Copt who has been demonstrating in Tahrir Square since January 30. "Is it merely to pander to Mubarak? Or is it to isolate us from our Muslim compatriots, about whom many Copts have the wrong impression?
"In Tahrir, I've met many young Muslim activists - even some from the Muslim Brotherhood," Boutros, who preferred not to give his last name, told IPS. "They explained how Islam commands Muslims to protect Christians and Christian places of worship. I learned from them that the Muslims don't have any beliefs that threaten our rights or should frighten us as Copts."
Unlike Shenouda, some prominent Christian figures have actively supported the two-week-old uprising.
"Demonstrations and sit-ins constitute a legitimate means of expression, according to the law and constitution," read a February 1 statement signed by several Egyptian Catholic and Anglican clergymen and a handful of Coptic intellectuals. In reference to Shenouda's stance on the issue, the statement added: "We reject the church leadership's servile position calling on Copts not to join the uprising."
The ongoing wave of popular protests, the statement concluded, "has revived the Egyptian spirit despite recent attempts to snuff it out through the promotion of sectarian strife between the Egyptian people."
Rami Kamel, a member of Egypt's Coptic Youth Movement, was quoted as saying in independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm on February 4: "From the beginning, we've been participating in the demonstrations to call for the ouster of the ruling regime, which we blame for the country's economic and social decline."
The spirit of national unity, meanwhile, has hardly been confined to Tahrir Square.
Following the withdrawal of police from the streets of Cairo on January 28, Abdulla Rageb, a 42-year-old Muslim government employee from Old Cairo, has led an ad-hoc "popular committee" mandated with guarding churches in his neighbourhood.
"I'm protecting these churches as if they were mosques, because, according to Islam, we should respect Christian places of worship," Rageb told IPS. "As an Egyptian Muslim, I have no reason to hate Christians. We've always been neighbours here, and our relations are excellent."
Amgad Bishay, a 26-year-old Coptic middle school teacher from north Cairo, told a similar story.
"On the 'day of terror' (January 29, following the withdrawal of police) my mother was terrified," he told IPS. "So she asked our Muslim neighbour, an old friend of the family, to stay with her and my young sisters until me and my father could come home from work.
"There are no deep-seated problems between Egypt's Christians and Muslims; we were raised together," Bishay added. "Even if we might have occasional arguments, these are never religion motivated."
Many of those now supporting the uprising - of both faiths - say they the blame the regime for most if not all recent sectarian tension.
"The regime is responsible for the sectarian problems suffered by Copts," Kamel was quoted as saying. "Proof of this is that no church was attacked during the unprecedented absence of security (following the police withdrawal)."
"This corrupt government was behind 90 percent of the problems between Egypt's Christian and Muslim communities, which had coexisted in harmony for hundreds of years," agreed Rageb.
Boutros said: "This uprising won't only bring freedom to Egypt; it will also do much to dispel sectarian tension - of which the ruling regime was the only beneficiary."
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