Jerusalem family tattoos pilgrims for centuries

By DANIELA BERRETTA and IAN DEITCH | Associated Press
May 15, 2013
JERUSALEM (AP) — Orthodox Christians visiting the Holy Land often return home with more than just spiritual memories. Many drop by a centuries-old tattoo parlor in Jerusalem's Old City, inking themselves with a permanent reminder not only of their pilgrimage but also of devotion to their faith.The same Jerusalem family has been tattooing pilgrims with crosses and other religious symbols for hundreds of years, testament to the importance of the ancient ritual. While Catholics can get a written certificate of their pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Orthodox Christians opt for a tattoo, a permanent reminder of their visit.
In contrast to the bustling streets of the Old City outside, the Razzouk parlor is quiet, with only the buzz of an electric needle zigzagging across a pilgrim's arm.Pilgrims said the pain of the needle is worth the sacrifice."The pain I feel is like the pain that Jesus Christ felt when he was on the cross with his crown of thorns," said Etetu Legesse, a nurse from Ethiopia, as a scene depicting the crucifixion was etched on her triceps.Another Ethiopian woman wailed a song as an image of the Virgin Mary was tattooed onto her arm."I'm singing, God, I'm thinking about God; he died for us on the cross, that's why I'm singing," the 35-year-old woman, who gave her name as Mebrat, said.
Anton Razzouk, the family's 72-year-old patriarch, says the business can be traced back to a Coptic ancestor who traveled by camel and donkey from Egypt to Jerusalem for a pilgrimage about 300 years ago and decided to stay.Today, the Razzouk business is the oldest tattoo parlor in the Old City catering to Christian tourists. Razzouk says that up until the 1950's his father's business was unchallenged and that he was the only one in the Old City, though a handful of competitors have sprouted up since then.The art form was passed on from father to son and countless pilgrims have returned home over the centuries with the markings. Razzouk said his father, Jacob, tattooed Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie during a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, as well as hundreds of allied troops stationed in the region during World War II. He said the markings remind the faithful not to sin."A tattoo on the hand is the best certificate of pilgrimage because it stays there forever. It stays until the person is dead. It stays with him until the grave," said Razzouk.Whereas Judaism and Islam prohibit marking the body, for Orthodox Christian denominations like Armenians, Syrians, Ethiopians and Copts, tattoos are both decorative and a sign of faith. Roman Catholicism does not ban tattooing, but the practice is not as common.Razzouk says he tattoos 300 to 400 pilgrims each year. His service is so popular that the family often goes to nearby hotels to tattoo travelers as well.Designs include crosses in different shapes, as well as elaborate Virgin Mary and crucifixion motifs. Orthodox pilgrims traditionally get them done during Easter after wandering through the Old City and praying at the Holy Sepulcher Church, built on the site where Christians believe Jesus was crucified and resurrected. Tattoos cost between 20 and 100 dollars, depending on how elaborate they are.Orthodox Christians, who follow the older Julian calendar, marked Easter at the beginning of May. Roman Catholic and Protestant denominations that observe the newer Gregorian calendar held their Easter celebrations at the end of March.The shop is unassuming, with a simple sign reading "Tattoo & Change." To supplement their income, the family runs a money-exchange business and sells a variety of religious objects and books, from crowns of thorns to rosaries, as well as crosses and tour guides.Razzouk can rest assured that his family will carry on the tradition. He has been training his son Wassim, 40, to take over the family business. On a recent day, Wassim was busy tattooing customers. Anton's 10-year-old grandson Nizzar has also shown interest in the business."A lot of people, when they sit down to make the tattoo, say that they've been waiting for this all their lives," Wassim Razzouk said.

Court gives prosecutors 2 weeks to finalize corruption charges

The Associated Press
May 15, 2013
An Ethiopian court ruled Tuesday that prosecutors have two weeks to finalize corruption charges against two dozen people who have been arrested, including a senior Cabinet minister.
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An Ethiopian court ruled Tuesday that prosecutors have two weeks to finalize corruption charges against two dozen people who have been arrested, including a senior Cabinet minister.
The 24 people charged include the head of Ethiopia's revenue and customs authority, Melaku Fenta. They are accused of illegal trading and tax evasion.Ethiopia's top anti-corruption official, Ali Sulaiman, told parliament Tuesday that the suspects had been under surveillance for over two years.Prosecutors Monday requested permission to keep the suspects in custody for two more weeks for questioning. The suspects asked to be released on bail.The country's intelligence agency and corruption watchdog announced the arrests of 13 people over the weekend. But court documents now show an expanded list of suspects that includes family members of the accused

Ethiopia: DFID Fail to Act on Human Rights Violations

By Gordon Bennett
May 15, 2013
The Ethiopian government may be guilty of atrocities against indigenous peoples as it completes construction of the Gibe III dam. UK aid-agency DFID has failed to exert its influence and protect the rights of these minorities.

Ethiopia may until recently have been a byword for famine, but in one part of the country at least, there are people who have lived largely without outside help for hundreds of years. With the connivance of the British government, this is about to change forever.
The tribes of the Lower Omo Valley in south west Ethiopia - chief among them the Mursi, the Nyangatom, the Bodi and the Daasanach - depend on a combination of flood retreat cultivation on the banks of the Omo River, rain fed cultivation further back from the river, and cattle on the grass plains.

A Karo man and woman sit in front of Ethiopia's Omo River, which is a lifeline in their parched land (Photo: Survival International)

They move between these resources seasonally so as to exploit them to their best advantage. A self-sufficient existence outside mainstream society has meant that few speak Amharic, and that fewer still can read or write.

Like most of us they are strongly attached to their way of life and their traditions, and believe passionately in their right to decide for themselves whether and how to change them.
But flood retreat cultivation will become impossible when the Ethiopian government completes the Gibe III dam on the upper Omo, as it is expected to do shortly. Large-scale irrigation will follow, allowing government sugar plantations to gobble up huge swathes of their ancestral land.
At least ninety thousand people will be forced to relocate to permanent 'villages', compelled to give up their herds and become sedentary cultivators. If experience elsewhere in Ethiopia is anything to go by, many will end up dependent on government handouts or starvation wages on the plantations. A pastoralist way of life which has survived for centuries will disappear forever.
An unwelcome jibe
With no political clout, and no chance of redress through the courts, the Lower Omo tribes lack any means to protect themselves. But as the country's second largest donor, the British Government is not without influence in Ethiopia and could, if it chose, do much to ensure respect for their basic rights.
Unfortunately for the Mursi, the Daasanach and the other tribes of the Lower Omo, the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) has proved reluctant to act.
The UK knows there is a problem. With masterly understatement, it has acknowledged that 'past experience in other countries has shown that where people are resettled against their will this can impact negatively on their well-being and livelihoods'. 'Impact negatively' might well be interchanged with 'utterly destroy'.
In an attempt to avoid the worst excesses of forced resettlement, DFID and the other twenty-five aid agencies that make up the Development Assistance Group (DAG) have even produced a set of Guidelines for the Ethiopian government.
These stipulate that resettlements should be 'voluntary'; that they should take place only after a feasibility study has been discussed with the community; that the community itself should participate in the planning and implementation of the resettlement programme; that prompt and effective compensation should be paid for losses suffered; and that there should be an independent mechanism to resolve grievances and disputes.
But in the Lower Omo Valley these safeguards have been totally ignored. The gulf between what is written and what happens in practice has never been wider.
No feasibility studies were carried out before work started on the plantations. Thousands have already been removed from their land and herded into 'villages' against their will. More forced resettlements are on the way.
No compensation has been paid, and no system has been put in place to handle complaints. When an American observer suggested to a DFID representative in Addis Ababa that few of the Guidelines had been followed, she replied that 'none of them have been followed'.
Atrocities provoke apathy

The scale of oppression in the Lower Omo will probably never be known, but is at least partly described in a report published in January 2013 by International Rivers.
The systematic violation of tribal rights in the Lower Omo is also charted in a petition that Survival International has now lodged with the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights.
But none of this is news to the British authorities. As long ago as July 2009, Survival International met with DFID to express its concerns about the threat that Gibe III poses for the Lower Omo tribes.
In September 2011, Human Rights Watch told the Department that security forces relied on beatings, harassment and arbitrary arrests to crush tribal opposition to the plantations.
DFID was sufficiently concerned by the allegations - or at least by the political fallout that it might suffer if they became more widely known - that in January 2012 it sent officials to the area to find out for themselves.
At meetings with Mursi and Bodi they were told not only about the arrests and beatings but of the deliberate destruction of grain stores; of denied access to the Omo River; of threats to sell or kill the cattle of those refused to move; and of the widespread use of the military to intimidate people into giving up their land. There were numerous allegations of rape.
For several months DFID said nothing about these complaints in public, and so far as is known did nothing about them in private. It appears to have been spurred into action (of a sort) only when its interpreter on the January trip warned, in September 2012, that in the continued absence of any progress, he would release his audio transcripts of the meetings. These give a graphic account of the suffering that the tribes have had to endure.
Without Mursi
One Mursi man, for example, had asked: 'Now if you go to the Omo River ... will you see any Mursi there? We have left it without any people there and we are staying here in the plains being hit by the sun. The people were beaten away by the Government that brought its force.'
Another had complained that 'the Government never came here, and we didn't get to discuss with them about the sugar cane. They just went to the bush without talking to us, and looked at all the land, and then drove in their trucks and started clearing'.
A third had told DFID that Government officials 'come and take up all our land and give us violence, and they rape our wives. [They have done this to] the people of Bongo and also in the Bodi.
If they give us violence and we are killed off then they can take over the land. It will be taken over by the people who can read and write. To me, this is my land, the Mursi land, our ancestor's land.'
In October 2012 - shortly after it had been shown the audio transcripts - DFID prepared a so-called 'report' of the January visit. The report was undated, did not name its authors and did not explain the ten-month delay in writing it. The report was released only after Parliamentary Questions about the trip had been put to the Secretary of State.
Perhaps because DFID now knew of the transcripts, the report conceded that the allegations of human rights abuse were 'extremely serious'. It concluded, however, that a more detailed investigation would be required to 'substantiate' them, and that this would have to be based on a 'robust methodology'.
An investigation was apparently regarded as the necessary corollary to the equally 'robust' stand that