Sep 9, 2008

Talking Caucasus: Russian leaders Saturday discuss the conflict with Georgia in the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow. Today at 5:30 p.m., Costa Rican residents will gather at the Friends Peace Center in San José (175 m south, 25 m west of Plaza de la Democracia) for a conference with academic Fernando Duran called “Conflict in the Caucuses.”

Sergei Chirikov / EFE

Slow fasting: Egyptian Sheik Elsafi Abdel Aziz welcomes visitors to the Muslim Cultural Center of Costa Rica on Calle Blancos in Guadalupe, north of San José, and talks about observing Ramadan with this country's small Muslim community.

Ronald Reyes / Tico Times

Costa Rica's sparse but diverse Muslim community has begun its second week of observing Ramadan, the solemn month of fasting by day and feasting at sundown.

During Ramadan, the ninth month in Islam's 12-month lunar calendar that began Sept. 1, Muslims must refrain from such activities as eating, drinking, smoking and having sex before nightfall, said Sheik Elsafi Abdel Aziz, the Egyptian imam at the Muslim Cultural Center of Costa Rica, on Calle Blancos in the northern San José district of Guadalupe.

“Fasting keeps us fearful before Allah,” he said.

The sheik was finishing teaching an Arabic lesson with a Costa Rican student. He wore a gray robe and a white hat, his dark hair and beard kept short. He spoke softly as he gave a tour of the upstairs praying room, where ornate rugs cover the floor and elegant Arabic scriptures are posted on the walls.

Abdel Aziz said dates are the best “breakfast” after a day of fasting and prayer, followed by a substantial, well-rounded meal.

He said that the four week's of daily hunger also remind Muslims of impoverished and less fortunate members of the population who need their help.

The center's president, Dr. Abdulfatah Sasa, over the phone, concurred, paraphrasing the Koran, saying, “No Muslim sleeps with his stomach full while a neighbor lies with his stomach empty.”

While Costa Rica keeps no official count on religion, Sasa, a Palestinian refugee who settled here in 1973, said some 150 families belong to his Sunni Muslim congregation. He estimates about 500 Muslims live here, refuting a Wikipedia article that puts the number much higher at 4,000.

Whatever the exact figure, it is a small fraction of the greater, mostly Catholic population. Costa Rican society is 76.3 percent Catholic and 13.7 percent Evangelical, according to the CIA's World Factbook. Lebanese Consul Albert Karam Kayssm said this country's community pales in comparison to the large groups in Argentina and Brazil.

The consul, as the majority of his fellow Lebanese émigrés in this country, is Christian. However, he said he has close contact with the Muslim community here as his consulate is the only one serving immigrants from Arab countries in Costa Rica.

Despite their low numbers, Muslims make up a plethora of cultures and nationalities here, including immigrants from Algeria, India, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, the Palestinian territories and Syria, all enjoying freedom to live in peaceful coexistence with Costa Ricans, said Sasa.

The community built the San José mosque, which Sasa said is the only one in Costa Rica, in 2003.

Acknowledging tensions and conflict facing his fellow Muslim émigrés in other foreign countries, Sasa said, “When we opened the mosque there wasn't any protest from the neighbors. The Costa Ricans have been very accepting.”

And to some extent, the different nationalities within the Muslim community seem to welcome each other's practices as well.

“On the last night (Eid al Fitr) we all get together for prayer at the mosque,” Sasa said, “and everyone brings a typical dish from their country for the others to try.”

Depending on the moon, Ramadan is set to last through the end of September.

The gusts that swept through San José early yesterday afternoon were “strong winds” and not a tornado as initially reported, according to Costa Rica 's National Meteorological Institute.

Meteorologist José Joaquín Agüero said the wind zipped through faster than 100 kilometers per hour, although the institute has no official measurement. Conditions may have been ripe for one but “it was not a tornado,” he said.

Speaking today during a heavy downpour in the Central Valley, Agüero said residents tomorrow afternoon should expect more hard rain to fall.

GRANADA, Nicaragua – Leaders of nongovernmental organizations and human rights groups are uniting their voices of protest against an aggressive new campaign by the President Daniel Ortega administration to “persecute” civil society groups that have dared to criticize the government or the direction of the country.

First Lady Rosario Murillo last week launched a brazenly aggressive government campaign called “Operation No More Lies,” aimed at discrediting civil society by calling non-government organizations (NGOs) “modern day Trojan Horses” that mask “an international campaign against the revolutionary government” of Ortega.

The campaign, launched under the guise of investigative journalism in the administration's new weekly bulletin “El 19,” accuses the Autonomous Women's Movement (MAM), the Center of Investigations for Communication (CINCO), international group OXFAM and a network of other Nicaraguan human-rights and democracy groups of being part of an international conspiracy against the government.

According to the administration, “right-wing international groups,” such as OXFAM, are supporting a “triangulation of slander” by sending money to women's groups via CINCO, a non-governmental group headed by journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro. The women's groups, according to the administration, then use the veil of “feminism” to attack and slander the government.

Sandinista media outlets, infamous for playing judge and jury, jumped on the story and accused Chamorro and feminist leader Sofia Montenegro of “money laundering.”

The Government Ministry (MINGOB) apparently interpreted the Sept. 2 report in “El 19” as an official presidential order and quickly announced it was opening an investigation of MAM, CINCO and OXFAM, among other groups that have criticized the government. Gustavo Sireas, head of MINGOB's registry of nongovernmental organizations accredited in Nicaragua, said the government's efforts were to make sure that the registry is “in order” and denied it was part of a government crackdown on political enemies.

But for those in the government's crosshairs, that explanation is unconvincing.

“This is an attempt to intimidate not only us but all other non-governmental organizations,” Ana Quirós, a leader of the Autonomous Women's Movement, told The Nica Times yesterday.

For Quirós, the government campaign is part of a political revenge against the feminist movement for supporting Murillo's daughter, Zoilamérica Narváez, in her 1998 sexual abuse case against Ortega.

“This definitely has to do with the Zoilamérica case, which has become internationally relevant again,” Quirós said, referring to recent protests by feminist leaders in other countries who have called Ortega a “rapist.”

Quirós added that MAM – a social movement, not a registered NGO – is studying the possibility of taking the case before the International Commission against Torture, on the argument that the government's campaign is one of psychological torture and terrorism. She said that if anything happens to Montenegro or any other of the leaders of the women's movement, “it will be the exclusive responsibility of this government.”

“We can't forget what happened to Carlos Guadamuz, who was assassinated on the street,” Quirós said of the anti-Ortega journalist who was gunned down in broad daylight by a Sandinista assassin in 2004.

Chamorro, speaking on his weekly television news show, Esta Semana, called the government campaign a “dangerous escalation of persecution” of civil society groups and a violation of citizens' rights to organize and participation in society.

Chamorro said his organization has always followed the law, and mocked the so-called “investigative journalism” by the government newspaper, saying all the information they reported was taken from the organization's Web page and other sources in the public domain.

The same Sandinista media outlets in 2006 accused Chamorro – without any basis or formal charges – of drug trafficking after he ran an investigative report linking Sandinista officials to a land extortion case in Tola.

Chamorro has called the newest set of government slander campaign “cowardly,” and is calling on others to stand up to the Ortega administration's fear tactics.

GRANADA, Nicaragua – The National Assembly has asked Finance Minister Alberto Guevara to appear before a legislative committee this week as part of an investigation into the government's Venezuelan slush-fund scandal.

Opposition legislators called for Guevara's testimony after a Central Bank audit of Venezuelan aid to date left more questions than answers. The Central Bank dedicated nearly two pages of its 52-page report on international cooperation to Venezuelan aid, which it estimated at $184.9 million in 2007. The report accounted for just a fraction of President Daniel Ortega's claim last June that Venezuela has injected more than $520 million in aid and financing into Nicaragua since he took office in January 2007.

“These issues need to be clarified as part of this investigation,” said Liberal party legislator José Pallais, adding that Guevera was scheduled to appear Sept. 11 before the National Assembly's directorate.

While speaking to residents of the northern border town of Ocotal last month, Guevara said the Ortega government made sure that “not one córdoba” of Venezuelan aid went through the National Assembly. His comments caused uproar from opposition legislators and sparked calls for an investigation.

According to the Central Bank report, Nicaragua in 2007 received $69.3 million in financing under Ortega's oil deal with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez; $33.8 million of that was donated under the auspices of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), while $35.5 million was through private sector financing.

In addition, Venezuela donated: $16.4 million in cash; $2.9 in budget support; and $49.8 million in private-sector donations and loans, including material goods in response to Hurricane Felix, funding for internships, and school construction. Ten-million dollars was provided in loans for farming cooperatives, and $3.6 million in “other” donations.

Of the more tangible donations, another $46.4 million was invested in 60 megawatts of new power plants.

Deputy Foreign Minister Manuel Coronel Kautz told local press that the difference in Ortega's estimate and that of the Central Bank is because the Ortega government hasn't been able to spend all of the $520 million yet.