The Infidel; News for The Damned - 2014 - 03 - 06

In what the United Nations is calling ethno-religious cleansing in the Central African Republic, tens of thousands of Muslims are being forced to flee the country under the protection of military guard. They are escaping the religious violence from the country's majority Christian community. Christian militants, calling themselves anti-balaka - meaning "anti-machete", have been carrying out violent attacks against Muslim neighborhoods and businesses, including theft, ***, ***, and the desecration of bodies. As the Muslims abandon their homes, Christian mobs burn their mosques and loot their businesses. Christian militias are also attacking the military convoys escorting the displaced Muslims west to the Cameroon border. A great many of the exiles were born in the Central African Republic but this does not stop the crowds from shouting "Get out foreigners" at the departing convoys. As explained in an earlier Infidel show, the anti-Muslim violence in the Central African Republic is a reaction to human rights violations perpetrated against Christians over the last year following a coup by Muslim Seleka rebels. Fueled by overwhelming poverty and a desire for revenge, the violence continues to escalate despite promises by the interim government to apprehend Seleka personnel and hold them accountable for war crimes. Amnesty International has released a report on the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in the Central African Republic detailing the violence of the last two months. This report, including Amnesty International's recommendations for action at both the local and international level, was submitted to the republic's interim president Catherine Samba-Panza. Amnesty International's recommendation is available to the public in .pdf format. We've provided you with a link in today's show description. Hungarian Jews are threatening to boycott a Holocaust memorial and planned commemoration in Budapest because they say it downplays the role the Nazi-allied Hungarian government played in the deaths of its people. The Federation of Jewish Communities, known in Hungary by the name Mazsihisz (mah-JEEz), voted recently to boycott a state ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Hungarian Holocaust, and oppose the permanent memorial planned for Budapest. The group says the memorial does not accurately reflect the Hungarian government's active role in deporting Hungarian Jews to German concentration camps during World War II. Between June 1944 and the Allied liberation of Budapest in 1945, four hundred and thirty thousand Hungarian Jews were sent to Nazi concentration camps. These deportations occurred under a fascist Hungarian government and were initiated by Hungarian soldiers, who later turned the Jews over to German soldiers. Mazsihisz chairman Andras Heisler has presented the group's position to the Hungarian prime minister, telling the press he has been promised a response. Among those waiting is another Mazsihisz leader, Gusztav Zoltai. Zoltai recalls that Jews were being stripped of their rights even before the Nazi occupation. He was eight years old when the events being commemorated happened and he remembers not German but Hungarian solders and fascists keeping the Jews as prisoners in the ghetto. The official memorial is currently under construction at a train station in Budapest that once served as a deportation hub for concentration camp victims. Hungary's intention for the memorial is to ensure that those victims receive "empathy and an honorable commemoration," said a government spokesperson said earlier this year. A Russian Islamist insurgent group had called on its faithful to pray for an earthquake in Sochi during last month's Winter Olympics. The insurgent group, called the Caucasus Emirate, had posted a statement online calling for Muslims to ask god to bring an earthquake and flood to the city of Sochi. The statement referred to the Russian government as "pigs" and denounced the games as being "of the atheists and pagans". They called the city a place where their ancestors' blood was shed in defense of Islam. Parts of the Olympic complex were built on land that was once home to a people called Circassians, an ethnic group not directly connected to the Caucasus Emirate. The Circassians were expelled from the North Caucasus during the Russian Revolution in the late 19th Century. A year ago, the leader of the Caucasus Emirate, Doku Umarov, urged followers to prevent the Sochi Olympic games from being held. This new call to pray for destruction was not unexpected. This is not to say the group has been inactive. Earlier this year, six bodies were discovered in cars 300 kilometers from Sochi. In a YouTube video, the Caucasus Emirate has taken responsibility for the killings. A man identified as Emir Tengiz, a Caucasus Emirate leader, said that the deaths were not related to the Games. He spoke instead of Russian police misconduct and warned of future attacks intended to drive the Russian-speaking population out of the North Caucasus region.