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Liberia tries pop song, billboards to calm census fears

SELEGA, Liberia (AP) — The deep distrust of government created by years of war is evident in Liberian villages like Selega, where people don’t understand why census workers have been chalking numbers on every house, lean-to, hut and shack.

What do you think they want with my house? says Monogo Kebeh, a 70-year-old woman outside her mud hut.

The census is an exercise as old as the Roman Empire, but in a country that has not had one for a quarter century it’s anything but ordinary.

For more than a year, over 9,000 census-takers have combed the densely forested nation mapping every structure. For three days starting Friday, they will revisit each dwelling and count the inhabitants.

The preparations, including the marking of dwellings, have given birth to rumors. Some wonder if its part of a military recruitment drive, a potent fear in a country where boys as young as 5 were handed machine guns and forced to fight. Others believe it’s in preparation for new taxes.

To try to dispel these and other rumors, the government commissioned a pop star to compose a catchy tune about the census. It’s been translated into Liberia’s 16 languages and is playing daily on the radio, urging Liberians to stand up and be counted.

Throughout the country’s interior, billboards have been erected reminding villagers to stay home for three days starting Friday to properly be counted. Schools are closed through the end of the census.

In 2003, warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor was forced into exile, paving the way for elections and a return to peace. In a country where the average person struggles to earn $1.37 a day and is dead before 41, spending millions on a census might seem frivolous.

But officials say their efforts to alleviate poverty and create a modern Liberia are useless without it.

Without data, there is no way to target your resources properly, says Edward Liberty, who heads the Liberia Institute of Statistics and Geo-Information Services, the agency charged with carrying out the census.

How can you know, he asks, where to build a hospital if you don’t have a clear grasp of where people live?

Census workers have already found that many villages that existed on the 1984 map are now empty — the result of massacres.

Counting citizens is an exercise that is at least 5,000 years old, dating to the ancient Babylonians, whose census tallied people, as well as the amount of honey, milk, wool and butter each had amassed.

The Romans gave the census its modern form, performing the count every five years. Today, censuses create a detailed snapshot of a country’s residents, including their age, gender, education and economic status.

In most developed countries, census-takers can simply ask a set of questions. In Liberia, they have to phrase them in imaginative ways, or face not getting correct information.

Many Liberians are illiterate and do not know their age. So, for example, if a woman appears to be in her 60s, a census-taker could ask if she was born before or after President William Tubman took office in 1943.

To determine economic status, census-takers ask villagers if they have a TV — but that could backfire, as a pilot census revealed last year.

You ask ‘Do you have a TV?’ in order to be able to classify the person’s economic situation, but they think that if they say they don’t have one, you might give them a TV. So they hide the TV and the fridge and the generator and say they don’t have a job and that their kids are not in school, thinking you’ll pay their school fees, said Rose Gakuba, the U.N. Population Fund’s representative in Liberia and a lead organizer of the census.

In the village of Selega — a tough, long drive through the forest from Liberia’s capital — the numbers chalked on Kebeh’s house are fading.

They are a riddle for the elderly woman, who scrunches up her face as she tries to read them. The village is far from the nearest billboard, and she hasn’t heard the census pop song.

After weeks of living with the numeric enigma, the thin, gray-haired woman has concluded that it’s something positive.

Those people who marked the house probably know that I am suffering, she says balancing a plate of tubers in her lap. They are going to bring me food because they know I don’t have enough.
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Black father sentenced for racially charged shooting

RIVERHEAD, New York (AP) — A black father was sentenced to two to four years in prison Wednesday for fatally shooting an intoxicated white teenager during a racially charged confrontation with two carloads of young people at the end of his driveway.

The parents of victim Daniel Cicciaro Jr., 17, were irate after learning that John White did not receive the maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

White, 54, was convicted in December of second-degree manslaughter and a weapons charge.

Nice message it sends to society that as long as you’re black and there’s a problem at the end of your driveway you can grab an illegal handgun and shoot someone in the face and get away with it, an infuriated Daniel Cicciaro Sr. told reporters while dozens of supporters sobbed nearby.

Well, let’s see what happens when Aaron White gets shot, and see how the laws are, Cicciaro said, referring to White’s 19-year-old son.

Defense attorney Frederick Brewington said Cicciaro’s remarks appeared to be a threat and demanded an investigation. Prosecutor Thomas Spota said the matter was referred to police, and the Whites were assigned extra protection at their home.

White was led away in handcuffs, but his attorneys planned to seek approval from a higher court to let him remain free pending appeal.

I’ve always remained remorseful about this incident, White told the judge.

At the trial, the defense invoked the nation’s violent racist past in arguing the shooting was justified, referring to the teenagers as a lynch mob.

White testified that he was trying to protect his family on a hot August night in 2006 when he got an unregistered pistol from his garage after a group of angry white teenagers turned up at his house late at night to fight his son. He claimed the handgun discharged accidentally, killing Cicciaro.

The conflict was fueled by a bogus Internet posting claiming Aaron White wanted to rape a female friend of one of the white teens.

Cicciaro, who had a blood-alcohol reading above the legal limit for driving, was just 3 inches from the pistol when he was shot in the face, a medical examiner testified.

White said Aaron had wakened him around 11 p.m. to tell him he had been feuding with other teens after being asked to leave a party and a group of the teens was headed to their house in Miller Place, a predominantly white community on eastern Long Island.

White, a construction worker, testified that he grew up in Brooklyn hearing stories about how the Ku Klux Klan torched his grandfather’s business in Alabama in the 1920s and that he feared a similar attack was about to happen. E-mail to a friend

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Hamilton turns the heat on Malaysian rivals

SEPANG, Malaysia — Lewis Hamilton will quite literally be feeling the heat as he goes into this weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix as the clear favorite after his dominating performance in the opening round of the Fomula One world championship in Australia.

The searing temperatures in Melbourne were always a factor, but Sunday’s race at the Sepang Circuit on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur is the most physically demanding, not just because temperatures can hit 40 degrees centigrade but also due to the extreme humidity.

A driver can easily lose up to four liters of fluid during a race, which can result in loss of concentration and performance.

This year, the drivers have not been helped by the fact the first two grands prix are back to back, with little time to acclimatize in between.

For Malaysia, it is very difficult to prepare physically for the race, even more so this year, and you cannot begin to imagine how hot it gets in the car, said McLaren star Hamilton.

It was the hardest race I have ever competed in last year, even with all the preparation and trying to look after your energy beforehand, he added.

Conditions aside, the British star is confident of doubling up in Malaysia after taking the checkered flag at Albert Park.

The race at Melbourne was the perfect start to the season for me, added Hamilton.

The car felt fantastic, and I do feel we can go quicker, but Malaysia is a tough race.

We are going to Sepang aiming to get another great result, but it is likely to be hotter again so it will be a big challenge. There is not much we can do with the cars between Australia and Malaysia as there is so little time, but we will keep pushing hard.

While McLaren and Hamilton are prospering, Ferrari spent Thursday trying to deny rumors of unrest in the team after longtime boss Jean Todt resigned as chief executive following the Australian GP.

The team’s number two driver Felipe Massa was forced to deny reports that he would be replaced by Toro Rosso’s Sebastien Vettel.

I have a three-year contract in case you’ve forgotten, Massa said. I am comfortable inside the team.

Last race was not a fantastic weekend for the team, the drivers, our reliability. It’s not a case of one bad result and you change everything inside the team, added the Brazilian. E-mail to a friend

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Beijing Olympics organizers face problem of too many squat toilets

BEIJING, China (AP) — Among all the protests, pollution concerns and talk of boycotts surrounding the Beijing Olympics, a more basic problem has arisen for organizers: the toilets.

At the more than 30 test events held by organizers, the presence of squat toilets at many of the new and renovated venues has drawn frequent complaints.

We have asked the venues to improve on this, to increase the number to sit-down toilets, Yao Hui, deputy director of venue management for the Beijing organizers, said Wednesday. Many people have raised the question of toilets.

The issue came up again over the weekend when the San Diego Padres played the Los Angeles Dodgers at the new Olympic baseball venue. The portable toilets trucked in were of the style used widely in Asia, but rarely in the West.

Yao suggested it would be difficult to change every permanent toilet in the 37 venues, 31 of which are in Beijing. So he said the focus would be on satisfying three groups of visitors: athletes, journalists and the Olympic family, meaning primarily VIPs.

He said renovation was underway at the three most striking venues for the Olympics, the 91,000-seat Bird’s Nest National Stadium, the Water Cube and the National Indoor Stadium. He said most of the toilets there should be the sit-down style.

Beijing is expecting about 500,000 foreigners to attend the August 8-24 games.

Most of the Chinese people are used to the squat toilet, but nowadays more and more people demand sit-down toilets, Yao said. However, it will take some time for this transition.

Beijing is reported to be spending at least $40 billion on the venues and related infrastructure, all designed to feature a modern country that has grown in three decades to a political and economic powerhouse.

I believe the Olympic games will be a great opportunity for us to speed up this transition, Yao said. I believe the situation will get better and better.
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Tibetans continue to defy China crackdown

BEIJING, China (CNN) — New video from China suggests that security forces have yet to gain complete control of Tibet and neighboring provinces which have suffered eruptions of anti-Chinese violence since last week.

Film of a crowd — some on horseback — attempting to storm a government building has been shot by a Canadian television crew that managed to gain access to a Chinese town in Gansu province despite attempts by Chinese authorities to keep foreign media away from the region.

On Thursday, China acknowledged for the first time that anti-government riots that rocked Tibet last week have spread to other provinces, The Associated Press reported.

Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao says he is ready to talk to the Dalai Lama if the Tibetan spiritual leader renounces violence and demands for Tibetan independence.

Brown said he spoke with Wen on Wednesday, pressing his government for constraint in dealing with the protesters.

But Chinese officials hold firm in their stance that the Dalai Lama masterminded the violence to undermine the Beijing Olympics and that he has demanded Tibetan independence. Wen on Tuesday called the Dalai Lama’s renunciations nothing but lies.

The Dalai Lama, who threatened Tuesday to resign as leader of Tibet’s government-in-exile if the violence got out of control, met Wednesday with leaders of several Tibetan activist groups. The younger activists, in defiance of their pacifist spiritual leader, demand Tibetan independence and are hoping to derail the Beijing Olympics. Watch first independent video of the violence in Lhasa.

The head of the Beijing Olympics said efforts by Tibetan activists to promote an international boycott of the Summer Games are doomed to failure. He also rejected demands by Tibetan activists that the Olympic torch relay be routed away from Tibet. Watch report on talk of Olympics boycott.

Members of the Canadian TV crew reached the town in Gansu province, near the Tibet border, where they videotaped hundreds of angry protesters attempting to storm a government building.

Led by several dozen villagers on horseback, about 1,000 people rushed toward the facility only to be turned back by 100 Chinese soldiers who were inside, according to Canadian TV correspondent Steve Chao. The video showed women and children among the charging throng. Watch video of horseback attack .

After they were repelled, the villagers ran to a nearby school where they tore up a Chinese flag and replaced it with the Tibetan flag. That section of Gansu province is part of historical Tibet, but it is not inside what is now known as the Tibetan Autonomous Region.

Tibetan monks at a monastery in Sichuan province — another neighboring Tibet — sent word to exiled monks at a branch of their monastery in Dharamsala, India, that two monks were arrested after they e-mailed photographs of monks killed in protests to the news media. Internet and phone service has since been interrupted to the Amdo Ngaba Kirti Monastery in Ngaba County, the exiles told CNN.

The exiled monks said lay people in that area reported that the monks there have been ordered not to congregate for prayers on Thursday, a move they fear is a sign of an oncoming crackdown against the monastery.

Chinese officials hold firm in their stance that the Dalai Lama masterminded the violence to undermine the Beijing Olympics and that he has demanded Tibetan independence. Wen on Tuesday called the Dalai Lama’s renunciations nothing but lies.

In a statement issued Wednesday, the Chinese Embassy in Washington accused some monks of inciting beating, smashing, looting and burning sprees in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa.

The statement said that in the past few days, more than 55 vehicles have been smashed or burned in the city, a dozen civilians have been killed, 10 officers have been seriously injured and more than 300 homes and businesses have been set on fire.

Any attempt to split China will be firmly opposed by the Chinese people of all nationalities, including the Tibetan compatriots, and is doomed to fail, the statement said.

The Chinese government’s attacks on the Dalai Lama’s motives and methods collide with international pressure for it to begin talking to the exiled Tibetan leader. U.S. Secretary Condoleezza Rice recently renewed her call for such talks and the British prime minister joined the push Wednesday.

I spoke to Premier Wen of China this morning and I made it absolutely clear that there had to be an end to violence in Tibet, Brown told Parliament Wednesday.

He said he pressed Wen for constraint toward Tibet and asked that China begin talking with the Dalai Lama.

The premier told me that subject to two things the Dalai Lama has already said — that he does not support the total independence of Tibet and that he renounces violence — that he would be prepared to enter into dialogue with the Dalai Lama, Brown said.

It was not immediately clear if this meant the Chinese leader was ready to start that dialogue anytime soon, given Wen’s recent rejection of the Dalai Lama’s renunciations.

The Chinese premier’s refusal to accept his proclamations caused the Dalai Lama to respond with incredulity Tuesday at a news conference in Dharamsala, northeastern India, where he presides over the Tibetan government-in-exile.

The Chinese prime minister accuses me of all these things I said, he said. Absolutely not. Prime minister come here and investigate thoroughly all our files, or record my speeches. Then the prime minister will know how much is distorted by local officials.

The Dalai Lama also said that would remain spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, but said he is prepared to relinquish his leadership role in the government-in-exile if violence persists in Tibet. If things go out of control then my only option is to completely resign, he added.

The Dalai Lama met with leaders of Tibetan exile groups Wednesday gain their support for his middle way strategy of asking for autonomy — not independence — and renouncing violence. Click here for gallery of global protests.

But many of the younger activists, most of whom were born in exile and have never been allowed to visit their homeland, insist total independence from China must be their goal. Unlike the Dalai Lama, they also hope to tarnish China’s efforts as host of the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Jiang Xiaoyu, vice president of the Beijing Olympic organizing committee, said Wednesday plans to include Tibet in the Olympic torch relay will not be derailed by the protests.

He also rejected suggestions that Tibetan exiles would be able to persuade Olympic athletes to boycott the opening ceremonies in August.

Olympic historian David Wallechinsky said it would be an effective protest. Some sort of boycott of the opening ceremonies, either by not carrying the national flags or, you know, toning it down or having world leaders not appear, that is something that Chinese citizens watching on television could not avoid seeing, Wallechinsky told CNN.
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